How to Pronounce Ermal C. Fraze
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Sep 16, 1913 Died on 26 Oct 1989 (aged 76)
American engineer, inventor of the pull-tab opener for beverage cans
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About Ermal C. Fraze
- Ermal Cleon "Ernie" Fraze (September 16, 1913 – October 26, 1989) was an engineer who invented the pull-tab opener used in beverage cans.
- Fraze was born on a farm near Muncie, Indiana, but later moved to Dayton, Ohio, where he assembled novelties for Cracker Jack boxes.
- He started his career in Ohio as a machine tool operator in the 1940s.
- Using a loan from his wife, Martha, he established the Dayton Reliable Tool & Manufacturing Company, his own machine tool business in 1949.
- The company produced tools such as improved gun barrels for war planes, usually for the industries, e.g.: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, General Electric and Ford.
- Fraze patented many of his innovations and would go on to obtain a degree at Kettering University.In 1959, while at a picnic with friends and family, Fraze discovered he had left his "church key" can opener at home, forcing him to use a car bumper to open cans of beer.
- Fraze decided to create an improved beverage opening method that would eliminate the need for a separate device, leading to his creation of the pull-tab opener. His first design included a lever that pierced a hole in the top of the can, but this caused a safety hazard as it produced sharp edges that could cut the user's finger.
- Later that year, he established a mechanism known as the "pull-tab" can, with its users simply being required to pull a removable tab to open the drink.
- He received U.S.
- patent No.
- 3,349,949 for the invention in 1963, and subsequently sold it to Alcoa.
- By 1965, around 75% of U.S.
- breweries were using them, but in the mid-1970s, pressure from environmentalists due to litter led to the development of the non-removable tabs used today.
- By 1980, his company was supplying can-end machinery worldwide making over $500 million in annual revenue.Ermal Fraze died in 1989, in Kettering, Ohio from a brain tumor.
- Soon after his death, the family sold the Dayton Reliable Tool Company to business managers, but it remained in Dayton.
