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Comment by jscheel | Hacker News Reader

Ok, bit of a bragging moment here: my grandpa, with two other gentlemen, created the process for machining seamless cans that is described here. Before them, cans had a lead seam in them. They discovered that you could draw down the aluminum and stretch it to form cans in one piece. He also invented the process for creating the bottom of soda cans, and his friend invented the modern tab on the top of soda cans.

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That's pretty damn awesome. Behind everything we take for granted, there's someone who slaved over it and brought it into fruition. Thanks for sharing!

I think about this occasionally. Everything that you see that isn't "nature" was explicitly designed by somebody (and most likely a large team of somebodies). Its truly mind-boggling.

Sort of. So much is the result of tiny incremental design improvements over decades or centuries. I remember the first time I took apart a small engine it seemed to work so well together that it was almost organic. Like it had evolved, which in a way it had

And how those things not only survive but flourish in the same environment. It's mind boggling that those designs can co-exist without immediate repercussions! The complexity through the times amazes me!

I like to think about that too. Like I notice that there's a groove in the latch for a bathroom stall; an engineer decided to put that there, but for what reason?

Wow that's awesome. We live in a society where one person takes credit for something and in this case a Coke can is comprised of many inventions as are many things. You never hear about the guy who helped shape the process of creating the bottom of soda cans or the tab on them. I wonder who invented that piece of plastic that holds store bought bread together?

Loaves of bread were sold unsliced until 1928, when a guy named Otto Rohwedder figured out how to slice bread without crushing it. Rohwedder then wrapped the bread and inserted U-shaped pins on both sides of the loaf to make it look similar to an unsliced loaf. Sliced bread became a hit because you no longer had to worry about cutting pieces of similar thickness when you made a sandwich.

That's where the expression "the best thing since sliced bread" comes from. Obviously, people had been slicing loaves of bread for ages, but pre-sliced bread really is a relatively recent business innovation. The NYT magazine had a page about this in this week's issue.[1] Also, here is a Google ngram of the phrase "since sliced bread". You can see that the saying started in the 1950s. [2]

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/magazine/who-made-that-sli...

[2]http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=since+sliced+br...

I can not remember where read it, but if I recall correctly, sliced bread did not catch on until the patent on the bread slicing machine expired.

Not the individual inventor, but this company[1] invented the twisty in 1939.

Also twistys are color coated on bread, denoting the day of the week it was put out[2].

[1] http://www.twistems.com/pages/profile.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twist_tie#Color_coding_for_brea...

I love that Wednesday's twist tie color is a complete mystery even with the assembled resources of the internet.

As for why bread is not baked on Wednesdays (Read the comments):

http://main.kitchendaily.com/2011/04/07/color-coded-bread-ba...

"One thing is universal-all bread companies deliver five days a week, with days off being Wednesday and Sunday. Thus, these days have no color coded bread for the deliver driver to remove from the store."

Also, it's not universal the color codes (Which can vary from one brand to another), and in some cases, 7 color codes are used because those bread companies deliver 7 days a week: http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/breadtag.asp

I had a good laugh at that as well. I'm wondering now if it was intentional or the person that added it to wiki really did not know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Paxton

Great sleuthing work my friend!

There's a (perhaps surprising) amount of engineering happening in the tabs to soda cans.

(http://www.enotes.com/aluminum-beverage-can-reference/alumin...)

(http://www.engineerguy.com/videos/video-pop-can.htm)

Also, Pinjarra is doing the teal-orange thing too (https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Pinjarra,+Western+Australia...)

> They discovered that you could draw down the aluminum and stretch it to form cans in one piece. He also invented the process for creating the bottom of soda cans

Aren't these both part of the same process? Whatever is being done to force that piece of aluminum into the correct shape, it involves the same piece of metal.

Sort of, the can's bottom is flat (potentially with specific varying thicknesses) after the drawing. A punch then shapes the bottom to what it needs to be.

And this is why I love HN. There are so many interesting people lurking about. Thanks for sharing.

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