These two photos show ads for a variety of bottle and can openers used for soda and/or beer. These ads date to about the 1950s. The first ad is for Vaughan Novelty Mfg. Co. of Chicago, Illinois. They were manufacturers of a variety of kitchen accessories and made bottle and can openers for Coca-Cola as well as big beer bottlers like Pabst and high-end hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria. Vaughan was founded in 1910 and was originally named the Crown Throat & Opener Company.

There were a huge variety of can and bottle openers made by Vaughan. They stamped their products with a brand name or advertisement to personalize them for a their customers. The openers were given interesting names too, like “Nifty”, “Dainty”, “Opens-All” and “Never Chip”. Vaughan was in business until 1984 and their products are very collectible today.

The second photo shows an ad for bottle openers made by Walden Inc. of Cambridge, MA. I was unable to find any history about this manufacturer but found some interesting information about bottle openers in general. The necessity for bottle openers followed the invention of the first successful bottle cap (or crown) design that was put into use in 1894. The first opener was made of cast iron by William Painter of Baltimore, Maryland. It was developed as a necessity while he was trying to make a better bottle crown.