What I learned from beans on toast

To be honest, I sometimes like to have beans on toast for lunch. Due to the pandemic, last week I only went out to the small local supermarket in walking distance instead of making a bigger shopping tour by car. But then, when I was in front of the shelves with the preserved beans, the tins of the common brand (I grant, you all know, whom I’m talking about) was out of stock. So I took a jar of beans from a German competitor instead.

I don’t want to start a culture war here on the topic of which beans taste better and who is the most delicious producer. I’m not gourmet enough for that and “a cobbler should stick to his last”.

Instead I want to talk about the lid of the jar. It was a special two-part lid:

·       The outer part is just a ring with notches for the thread of the jar.

·       The inner part is a typical lid, but without the thread

·       The notches prevent the inner part from dropping out, but there are some millimetres clearance between the two

This does the following: You can move the outer ring even if the jar is still under vacuum. After a little bit of turning the notches will slightly lift the inner lid and allow pressure compensation. Thereby, I could open the jar without efforts or kitchen hacks.

“Very clever part of engineering”, I thought and started a little bit of lunch break research. The company’s homepage stated that they introduced this in 2012, but were pretty vague about the origin of this invention. That was suspicious to me. So I investigated further. 

I found an article, which linked the lid to the award winning “orbit” from the company Crown, who invented this in 2011. By now it is in use by quite a number of brands through-out Europe, but I still see further potential. I certainly was convinced from this lid.

But then I learned even more: Crown was once founded as “Crown cork and seal” by William Painter. Mr. Painter invented (who would have guessed by now) the crown cork in 1892. You could say, by this he influenced all our lifes. We know his invention, but probably not his name.

Altogether, Mr. Painter held 85 patents throughout his entire life. So quite an engineer and, furthermore, his inventions are still used today.

So after learning so much from my beans on toast for lunch, I opened up a bottle of beer after dinner to learn even more….