According to seasonal party poopers, this is the last weekend of summer vacation. What this really means is that starting next week, after Labor Day, families migrate from the pool to the school-supply aisles at Staples.
This hardly seems like a good reason to terminate warm weather fun. But being that Labor Day has officially been designated as the last gasp of summer, I think it is an appropriate time to reflect on that forgotten hero of all summer festivities: the bottle opener.
OK, ice cubes and hot dog buns are right up there too, but you don’t find those things folded into a pocket knife or attached to a key chain, now do you.
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Here is what I like about the bottle opener: it doesn’t have moving parts. It doesn’t require batteries. There is no user manual. You don’t have to call India if it breaks. And it isn’t shrink-wrapped in nuclear plastic.
The bottle opener is wireless, it always works, and, best of all, it seems like it could have been invented in New Jersey. But it wasn’t. The bottle opener was invented in Baltimore in the late 1800s by William Painter, an Irish immigrant, patent number 5142000.
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However, as an unreliable Internet journalist I don’t have a problem erroneously suggesting that the inspiration for the bottle opener was born out of necessity at the Jersey Shore after Mr. Painter discovered that he had no way of lifting bottle caps off celebratory beer and soft drink bottles. You see, Mr. Painter had invented the Crown bottle cap just months earlier, at the start of summer, patent number 464258.
It sounds plausible. And I think his wife invented the manicure on Labor Day after she came up with idea for pop-top tabs the previous Memorial Day.
So as we toast the end of summer, even if it is a bit premature, let us not forget the invention that made New Jersey famous.
The light bulb.
