Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A beverage can is often an aluminium can manufactured to hold a beverage for consumption for a single time only. The earliest kind of metal beverage can was made out of steel (similar to a tin can) and had no pull tab. Instead, it was opened by using a tool called a church key. Further advancements saw the end pieces of the can were made out of aluminium instead of steel. The first kind of all aluminium can was the same as its forebears, which all still used the church key to open them. Later, manufacturers introduced a pull tab, which eliminated the need for a church key, as drinkers could now get the cans open with their hands. The original pull tabs were actually pop tops where the tabs came off in the user's hand, which allowed people to make curtains out of them by hooking the popped off tabs to one another to make a chain. Enough chains side by side and you had a curtain. Fixed pull tabs followed in development, followed by the 'tapered end' can, which tapered slightly at both ends. The most modern advance has been the 'wide mouth' can- the opening for the liquid to come out has been enlarged. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.