Historic Beer Birthday: Michael Joseph Owens

January 1, 2025 By Jay Brooks

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Today is the birthday of Michael Joseph Owens (January 1, 1859–December 27, 1923). He “was an inventor of machines that could automate the production of glass bottles.”

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If you’ve ever opened a beer bottle, you’ve probably held something he had a hand in developing, because he made beer bottles cheap and affordable for breweries, and his company has continued to improve upon his designs. Based on his patents, in 1903 he founded the Owens Bottle Company, which in 1929 merged with the Illinois Glass Company in 1929 to become Owens-Illinois, Inc. Today, O-I is an international company with 80 plants in 23 countries, joint ventures in China, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, the United States and Vietnam, with 27,000 employees worldwide and 2,100-plus worldwide patents.

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Michael J. Owens in front of one of his bottling machines from a film shot in 1910.

Here’s a short biography of Owens:

Michael Joseph Owens was an inventor of machines that could automate the production of glass bottles.
Michael J. Owens was born on January 1, 1859, in Mason County, West Virginia. As a teenager, he went to work for a glass manufacturer in Newark, Ohio.
During the late 1800s, Toledo, Ohio was the site of large supplies of natural gas and high silica-content sandstone — two items necessary for glass manufacturing. Numerous companies either formed in or relocated to Toledo, including the New England Glass Company, which relocated to Toledo in 1888. This same year, the company’s owner, Edward Drummond Libbey, hired Owens.
Within a short time, Owens had become a plant manager for Libbey in Findlay, Ohio. At this point in time, glass manufacturers in the United States had to blow glass to produce the bottles. This was a slow and tedious process. Owens sought to invent a machine that could manufacture glass bottles, rather than having to rely on skilled laborers, greatly speeding up the manufacturing process. On August 2, 1904, Owens patented a machine that could automatically manufacture glass bottles. This machine could produce four bottles per second. Owens’s invention revolutionized the glass industry. His machine also caused tremendous growth in the soft drink and beer industries, as these firms now had a less expensive way of packaging their products.
In 1903, after Owens had invented his bottle machine but before he had patented the invention, Owens formed the Owens Bottle Machine Company in Toledo. Libbey helped finance Owens’s company. This firm initially manufactured Owens’s bottle machine. By 1919, the firm had begun to manufacture bottles, and the company changed its name to the Owens Bottle Company. The company grew quickly, acquiring the Illinois Glass Company in 1929. The Owens Bottle Company became known as the Owens-Illinois Glass Company this same year. In 1965, the company changed its name one final time. It became and remains known as Owens-Illinois, Inc.
Owens retired in 1919. He did not live to see his company grow into such an important manufacturer of glass. He died on December 27, 1923, in Toledo, Ohio. Over the course of his life, Owens secured forty-five patents.

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Here’s his biography from his Wikipedia page:

He was born in Mason County, West Virginia on January 1, 1859. He left school at the age of 10 to start a glassware apprenticeship at J. H. Hobbs, Brockunier and Company in Wheeling, West Virginia.
In 1888 he moved to Toledo, Ohio and worked for the Toledo Glass Factory owned by Edward Drummond Libbey. He was later promoted to foreman and then to supervisor. He formed the Owens Bottle Machine Company in 1903. His machines could produce glass bottles at a rate of 240 per minute, and reduce labor costs by 80%.
Owens and Libbey entered into a partnership and the company was renamed the Owens Bottle Company in 1919. In 1929 the company merged with the Illinois Glass Company to become the Owens-Illinois Glass Company.

To read more about Owens’ contributions, check out Michael Owens’ Glass Bottles Changed The World, by Scott S. Smith, Owens the Innovator at the University of Toledo, Today in Science, and the West Virginia Encyclopedia has a history of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company.

Historic Beer Birthday: William Painter

November 20, 2024 By Jay Brooks

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Today is the birthday of William Painter (November 20, 1838-July 15, 1906). He was born in Ireland, and in 1858 came to the U.S. “in search of better opportunities,” and settled in Baltimore, Maryland. He trained as a mechanical engineer and initially got a job “as a foreman at the Murrill & Keizer’s machine shop.” His biggest claim to fame is that he “invented the crown cork bottle cap and bottle opener. He worked with manufacturers to develop a universal neck for all glass bottles and started Crown Cork and Seal in 1892 to manufacture caps that could be used to seal the universal necks.”

William Painter and his father, Dr. Edward Painter : sketches and reminiscences

Over the course of his life, “Painter patented 85 inventions, including the common bottle cap, the bottle opener, a machine for crowning bottles, a paper-folding machine, a safety ejection seat for passenger trains, and a machine for detecting counterfeit currency. He was inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.”

The bottle cap was arguably his most important invention. “The crown cork was patented by William Painter on February 2, 1892 (U.S. Patent 468,258). It had 24 teeth and a cork seal with a paper backing to prevent contact between the contents and the metal cap. The current version has 21 teeth. To open these bottles, a bottle opener is generally used.

The height of the crown cap was reduced and specified in the German standard DIN 6099 in the 1960s. This also defined the “twist-off” crown cap, now used in the United States, Canada, and Australia. This cap is pressed around screw threads instead of a flange, and can be removed by twisting the cap by hand, eliminating the need for an opener.”

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He also patented several other innovations for the brewing industry, such as the Bottle Seal Or Stopper, from 1894, the Bottle Stopper, in 1885, a Closure For Sealing Bottles, in 1899, and a Capped-Bottle Opener, from 1894, to name just a few.

And here’s Painter’s obituary from the Brewers Journal in 1906:

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Historic Beer Birthday: Frederick Schaefer

September 28, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Frederick Schaefer (September 28, 1817-May 20, 1897). Frederick is the “F” in F&M Schaefer Brewing Co., founding it with his brother Maximilian in 1842. He was born in Wetzlar, which is part of Hesse, in what today is Germany. He arrived in New York in 1838, a year before his brother joined him in America.

This is his biography from Find a Grave:

Beer Magnate. He emigrated to the United States in 1838, settled in New York City, and was employed by a local beer maker. In 1839 his brother Maximilian also emigrated, carrying with him the recipe for lager, a popular brew in Germany that was then unknown in America. In 1842 the Schaefers bought out their employer and established F & M Schaefer Brewing. Lager proved popular and the Schaefer company became one of the country’s largest beer producers, with Frederick Schaefer remaining active in the company until failing health caused him to retire in the early 1890s. By the early 1900s, its customer base in the Northeastern United States made Schaefer the most popular beer in the country, a position it maintained until ceding it to Budweiser in the 1970s. The Schaefer brand continued to decline, and as of 1999 is owned by Pabst Brewing, a holding company that contracts for the brewing of formerly popular regional brands.

This is what the brewery looked like in 1842, when Frederick and his brother opened the brewery.

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Below is part of a chapter on the history of F&M Schaefer Brewing Co., from Will Anderson’s hard-to-find Breweries in Brooklyn.

Longest operating brewery in New York City, last operating brewery in New York City [as of 1976], and America’s oldest lager beer brewing company — these honors, plus many others, all belong to The F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Co.
“F. & M.”, as most breweriana buffs know, stands for Frederick and Maximilian, the brothers who founded Schaefer. Frederick Schaefer, a native of Wetzlar, Prussia, Germany, emigrated to the U.S. in 1838. When he arrived in New York City on October 23rd he was 21 years old and had exactly $1.00 to his name. There is some doubt as to whether or not he had been a practicing brewer in Germany, but there is no doubt that he was soon a practicing brewer in his adopted city. Within two weeks of his landing, Frederick took a job with Sebastian Sommers, who operated a small brewhouse on Broadway, between 18th and 19th Streets. Frederick obviously enjoyed both his job and life in America, and the next year his younger brother, Maximilian, decided to make the arduous trip across the Atlantic also. He arrived in June of 1839 and brought with him a formula for lager, a type of beer popular in Germany but unheard of in the United States. The brothers dreamed, and planned, and saved – and in the late summer of 1842 they were able to buy the small brewery from Sommers. The official, and historic, starting date was September, 1842.

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The new brewery they built in 1849.

Sommers’ former facility was a start, but that’s all it was, as it was much too small. New York beer drinkers immediately took a liking to “the different beer” the brothers brewed, and in 1845 Frederick and Maximilian developed a new plant several blocks away, on 7th Avenue, between 16th and 17th Streets (7th Avenue and 17th Street is today, of course, well known as the home of Barney’s, the giant men’s clothing store). This, too, proved to be just a temporary move; the plant was almost immediately inadequate to meet demands and the brothers wisely decided to build yet another new plant, and to locate it in an area where they could expand as needed. Their search took them to what were then the “wilds” of uptown Manhattan. In 1849 the brewery, lock, stock and many barrels, was moved to Fourth Ave. (now Park Avenue) and 51st Street. Here, just north of Grand Central Station, the Schaefers brewed for the next 67 years, ever-expanding their plant. The only problem was that the brothers were not the only ones to locate “uptown.” The area in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s grew rapidly all during the last half of the 19th century, and especially after the opening of the original Grand Central Terminal in 1871. Frederick and Maximilian had wisely purchased numerous lots between 50th and 52nd Streets, and by the time they passed away (Frederick in 1897 and Maximilian in 1904) the brewery was, literally, sitting atop a small fortune. Maximilian’s son, Rudolph J. Schaefer, fully realized this when he assumed the Presidency of the brewery in 1912. In that same year Rudolph purchased the 50% of the company owned by his uncle Frederick’s heirs. He thus had complete control of the brewery, and one of the first matters he turned to was the suitable location for a new, and presumably everlasting, plant. In 1914, in anticipation of its move, Schaefer sold part of the Park Ave. site to St. Bartholomew’s Church. This sale, for a reputed $1,500,000, forced Rudolph to intensify his search for a new location. Finally, in June of 1915, it was announced that the brewery had decided on a large tract in Brooklyn, directly on the East River and bounded by Kent Avenue and South 9th and 10th Streets. Here, starting in 1915, Rudolph constructed the very best in pre-Prohibition breweries. The move across the river to their ultra-new and modern plant was made in 1916, just four years before the Volstead Act crimped the sails (and sales!) of all United States breweries, new or old alike.

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Three generations of Schaefers.

Historical Beer Birthday: John Lofting

June 15, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is as good a day as any to celebrate the birthday of John Lofting (1659–June 15, 1742). Like many people born centuries ago who weren’t royal or otherwise well-born, we don’t know the exact day he was born, but we do know that he died today. Lofting was a Dutchman who lived in London as an adult, and patented several devices, the most famous of which was the fire engine, but he may also have been responsible for the beer engine.

Here’s his Wikipedia entry:

Originally Jan Loftingh, John Lofting was an engineer and entrepreneur from the Netherlands. His parents were Herman and Johanna. He moved to London, England, before 1686. He patented two inventions being the “sucking worm engine” (a fire engine) and a horse-powered thimble knurling machine. His mill was set up in Islington, where Lofting Road is named after him. However, in or about 1700, he moved his main operation to Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire to take advantage of the River Thames’ ability to turn a water wheel which improved productivity, enabling the production of over 2 million thimbles per year.

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The Sucking Worm Engine, from the British Museum.

And while Joseph Bramah patented the first practical beer engine, Lofting’s design made it possible for Bramah to build on and create his. Although there’s little I could find specific about Lofting’s invention, it is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for the beer engine:

A beer engine is a device for pumping beer from a cask in a pub’s cellar.
The beer engine was invented by John Lofting, a Dutch inventor, merchant and manufacturer who moved from Amsterdam to London in about 1688 and patented a number of inventions including a fire hose and engine for extinguishing fires and a thimble knurling machine as well as a device for pumping beer. The London Gazette of 17 March 1691 stated “the patentee hath also projected a very useful engine for starting of beers and other liquors which will deliver from 20 to 30 barrels an hour which are completely fixed with brass joints and screws at reasonable rates.”
The locksmith and hydraulic engineer Joseph Bramah developed beer pumping further in 1797.
The beer engine is normally manually operated, although electrically powered and gas powered pumps are occasionally used; when manually powered, the term handpump is often used to refer to both the pump and the associated handle.
The beer engine is normally located below the bar with the visible handle being used to draw the beer through a flexible tube to the spout, below which the glass is placed. Modern hand pumps may clamp onto the edge of the bar or be mounted on the top of the bar.
A pump clip is usually attached to the handle by a spring clip giving the name and sometimes the brewery, beer type and alcoholic strength of the beer being served through that handpump.
The handle of a handpump is often used as a symbol of cask ale. Keg beer dispensers usually feature illuminated countertop fittings behind which a handle opens a valve that allows the gas pressure in the keg to force beer to the attached spout.

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A modern beer engine.

Patent No. 5077061A: Method Of Making Alcohol-Free Beer

December 31, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Today in 1991, US Patent 5077061 A was issued, an invention of Christian Zurcher and Rudiger Gruss, assigned to Binding-Brauerei Ag, for their “Method of Making Alcohol-Free or Nearly Alcohol-Free Beer.” Here’s the Abstract:

A method of producing an alcohol-free or low alcohol beer comprising thermally breaking malt draff to obtain a malt draff mash from a substrate selected from the group consisting of a full- or a high-alcohol content beer brewing base or a protein fraction obtained from malt draff by digesting, boiling or autoclaving during the production of edible draff meal in a draff mash. The method homogenizes, extrudes and mechanically removes insoluble chaff from the brewing base prior to thermally breaking up the malt draff, cooling the malt draff mash to about 72° C., emzymatically breaking up the malt draff mash by adding coarsely ground malt, heating the mash to 80°-85° C., adding thereto coarsely ground malt premashed in cold water to produce a wort with a final fermentation degree of at most 60% and a temperature of 70°-74° C., which is maintained until iodine normality is attained and subjecting the iodine normal mash to mashing.

I’ve visited the brewery in Frankfurt, and done several blind panel tastings of N/A beer, and Clausthaler consistently comes in at our near the top. Also, it was our best-selling non-alcoholic when I was the chain beer buyer at BevMo. too.

Patent No. 3486512A: Fluid Transport Line Cleaning Device And System

December 30, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Today in 1969, US Patent 3486512 A was issued, an invention of Anthony Marino, for his “Fluid Transport Line Cleaning Device and System.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

Fluid transport line cleaning device and system inclusive of upright container having inlets for passing cleaning material and water into container for mixing in container and outlet for delivering mixture from container under pressure. Pipe having valve controlled outlets and line couplings for selectively passing mixture from container through fluid transport lines coupled thereto such as syrup lines and beer lines having tap rods and associated faucets at bar counter locations. Portion of pipe for beer lines being rigid and arranged for wall mounting at bar counter for supporting a portion of pipe and container in upright position.

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Patent No. 2919193A: Process Of Preventing Haze Formation In Beverages

December 29, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Today in 1959, US Patent 2919193 A was issued, an invention of Harry J. Sandell, for his “Process of Preventing Haze Formation in Beverages.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

The present invention relates to a method of reducing or preventing formation of hazes in fermented or unfermented beverages produced from cereals, fruits, other vegetable materials or parts thereof, and especially in malt beverages, e.g. beer, and in fruit juices and wines.
The present invention is based upon the surprising discovery that it is possible to prevent the formation of a haze in beverages such as, for instance, malt beverages, fruit juices and wines, by the addition of polyvinyl pyrrolidone or a homologue thereof in an excess over the above-mentioned quantity, i.e. 0 to 8 g. per hectolitre, which is necessary for maximum precipitation of the haze forming constituents. The process of the instant invention thus comprises adding polyvinyl pyrrolidone in a total quantity of at least 1 g. per hectolitre and in any case in an excess quantity of at least 50% over that needed for maximum precipitation. The stated lower limit 0 g. per hectolitre for the quantity of PVP that is needed for maximum precipitation either refers to the case (1) in which PVP having an average molecular weight of below about 15,000 is used and thus cannot form any precipitate or refers to the case (2) in which the kind or quality of beverage, e.g. beer, used does not give any precipitate with PVP even if the average molecular weight of the PVP used is above about 15,000. In the first-mentioned case, i.e. WhenP having a lower average molecular weight than 15,000 is used, it has been found, that a good result is obtained if the treatment with PVP is carried out according to the above-mentioned invention, i.e. by adding at least 1 g. of PVP per hectolitre. In the second case there is also obtained a good result if to the beverage there is added at least 1 g. of’PVP independent of its average molecular weight. While thus an excess of’P-VP of 1 g. per hectolitre might be considered as usable it has been found that when using PVP of an average molecular weight below about 15,000 or above about 15,000 it is suitable to add totally at least 5 grams of PVP per hectolitre provided that there is added at least 50% in excess over the quantity of PVP of’O to 8 grams per hectolitre that is needed for maximum precipitation of the haze forming-constituents with the PVP in question.

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Patent No. 2065949A: Beer Cooling And Dispensing System

December 29, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Today in 1936, US Patent 2065949 A was issued, an invention of Harry J. Sandell, for his “Beer Cooling and Dispensing System.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

The invention relates to a beer cooling and dispensing system, and has for its object to simplify and improve the efficiency of drawing beer from a storage refrigerator at one point and a dispensing 5 outlet at another.
The chief object of the invention is to provide a combination of devices adapted to contain an enclosed circulating and cooling medium, for the purpose of maintaining a uniform low temperature along a dispensing pipe contained therein.
Explanation In beer cooling and dispensing, the beer storage refrigerator is usually placed in the basement or some other convenient place that requires considerable piping and a coil to carry the beer and cool it from the storage refrigerator to the counter dispensing coil box. When this system is used, the beer leaves the cold refrigerator and runs exposed, then enters the iced coil, but due to the different go and uneven temperatures along the line of draught the beer cannot be drawn or controlled at the faucet without considerable waste.

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