Pop Top: Happy 50th Birthday

Every day in America, more than 250 million pop tops meet an eager finger and make that distinctive sound, releasing a swish and entry to an awaited beverage or food item. We can thank Ermal Cleon Fraze of Ohio for this small in size but huge in convenience invention, which first came into being 50 years ago, in 1959.

Fraze was an entrepreneur and inventor at heart. In the 1949 he started the Reliable Tool and Manufacturing Company in Dayton, where he made and patented a variety of items, including an improved gun barrel for war planes. He established an impressive list of clients, including Ford, Chrysler, NASA, and General Electric.

It was his frustration over not having a can opener during a family picnic that led him to invent the pop top, although he did not work on the idea until several months later. One sleepless night, he recalled his dilemma at the picnic and began to mull over how to solve it. After several unsuccessful attempts, he created the now-familiar pull-tab in 1959 and was granted a patent in 1963.

Fraze sold his invention to Alcoa, and the Pittsburgh Brewing Company was the first company to utilize the design. It didn’t take long for other beverage and beer companies to realize that the pop-top was a real money maker, and by 1965 nearly three-quarters of all breweries in the United States were using them.  

Forever the idea man, Fraze went on to make systems for beverage and beer companies so they produce their cans using his invention. By 1980, Fraze’s company (now renamed Dayton Reliable Tool) was raking in more than $500 million per year as the supplier of can-end machinery around the globe.

Fraze lived for 30 years after his pop top invention. So in the year 2009, we say “happy 50th birthday” to the pop top, and remember Fraze on the 20th anniversary of his death in 1989 at age 76. His company lives on, still operating out of Dayton, Ohio, with subsidiary facilities in South Carolina and Germany.