Design For the Real World: Pop-Tab

Studio 360 | Jun 23, 2011

In 1960, zip tops made opening aluminum cans more convenient — and dangerous. Those razor-sharp metal tags you ripped off and threw away were a hazard for the thirsty.

That all changed in 1972, when a young engineer named Daniel Cudzik was hired by the Reynolds Metals Company to help them enter the fledgling aluminum can business. Since its invention, Cudzik’s pop-tab has by one estimate conserved half a billion pounds of aluminum, and quite a few thumbs.

See the design: Daniel Cudzik's original patent application, with drawings, for an aluminum can with an "easy open wall."

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