@ Timothy A. Aines - Shysters have always been with us, I guess. It really grinds my gears that too many people have no honor or integrity. Nor do they treat others the way they'd like to be treated.
I actually went to grade school with the kid whose father invented those pull ring tabs. They were invented in Chicago. My friend's name was Alex Javorik, and his father was a brilliant engineer named Laszlo Javorik. He had fled Hungary in 1956 with his family when the Russians invaded and moved to my neighborhood and parish on the southside of Chicago. He came up with the idea for these pull-ring tabs on his own in the 1960's and out of his own pocket he put together a dozen cases of test cans with the newly designed tabs, and filed for the patent. He then took the test cans and went around to the various beer and soda companies to try and sell the idea. The response he got at the time was they all thought it was really clever, but they weren't willing to invest in all the retooling it would require to change how the cans were manufactured and they told him the change would be cost prohibitive. After hitting every possible beverage manufacturer, he prematurely concluded his idea was a bust. He took the remaining cases of unopened cans, (only about 6 cases left at this point) and threw them in the back of his garage (which is where I found them, and I first asked my friend Alex "hey, what are these?"). Anyway, less than a year after Laszlo made the rounds of the beverage companies, a guy in a suit with a briefcase shows up at his house one day, representing a consortium of beverage manufacturers. The guy said there was some mild interest in his pull ring idea and though they probably were never going to use it, the consortium was wondering if he would be willing to sell the exclusive and full worldwide rights to the idea in case they ever maybe wanted to try it. Laszlo fell for it, and sold all legal claim and the patent to his idea for $1200. Shortly thereafter, the entire industry changed over to pull-ring tabs everywhere. We figured out later that if he had simply negotiated even the smallest royalty - like 1/100th of a cent per tab - he would have been a bazillionaire.
Before pull tabs does anybody remember the "buttons" . A very small raised button on one side that you had to hit so that air could flow in the one in. It was so small that it was hard to push especially after having had a few beers already. Opposite the small button was a "larger" button that you then pushed down and then drank from. Didn't last very long a all. A few months ? a year? Does anybody remember these weird buttons. I think everybody had them but I mostly remember Coors cans.
The original pull tabs weren't very strong. I was riding in a non airconditioned car in the Coachella Valley on a very hot day and the Pepsi cans expanded, so the tabs popped popped, spewing cola on the ceiling of the car one by one.
On the TV series "EMERGENCY!", The paramedics came to the rescue of a man who had a habit of putting the tabs into the can. He nearly died because he almost completely aspirated one of those tabs.
HA! I remember those "aluminum curtains" but didn't have one myself. (Mine was of hollowed out bamboo canes strung together in alternating lengthwise and crosswise bits.)
The city of San Francisco asked the makers of those tabs to alter them. People discovered that the ring, with the tab removed, could substitute for a nickel in that city's parking meters.
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A very small raised button on one side that you had to hit so that air could flow in the one in. It was so small that it was hard to push especially after having had a few beers already.
Opposite the small button was a "larger" button that you then pushed down and then drank from.
Didn't last very long a all. A few months ? a year?
Does anybody remember these weird buttons.
I think everybody had them but I mostly remember Coors cans.
The city of San Francisco asked the makers of those tabs to alter them. People discovered that the ring, with the tab removed, could substitute for a nickel in that city's parking meters.
Registered users can log in to post comments or submit items for the galleries.