Crown Cork & Seal bottling machine

This machine has a very interesting historical provenance. It belonged to Ed Rozman, who was born in Crested Butte, Colorado, in 1922. Ed’s step-father was John Rozick, the owner of the Elk Saloon in Crested Butte. Rozick owned the saloon as early as 1899. The first patent for the Crown Cork & Seal bottling machine was issued in 1898, and it seems that this is one of the first examples produced. In that era, one of the biggest problems with bottling was the issue of contamination and leakage because of a poor seal on the bottle cap or stopper. Beer and soda often went “flat” and even incurred intrusions of mold because of a poor seal on the bottle cap. The Crown Cork & Seal machine used a cork-backed bottle cap, much like the bottle caps that we see on beer bottles today. The machine has a copper tank of about 10 gallons, and a valve to introduce CO2, along with a large crank to agitate the water and carbonate it. The tank sits on a metal stand and is connected by a couple of hoses to a heavy metal stand with a brass valve on top. The idea was to set a soda bottle on the stand, introduce ½” of sweet syrup flavoring to it, and then fill the bottle with carbonated water. At that point, the bottler would set a cork-backed bottle cap on top of the bottle and then step on a pedal, which would force a heavy plunger down onto the bottle cap and crimp it to the lip of the bottle.
In fact, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, at their 1994 convention, featured the Crown Cork & Seal bottling machine as one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, naming it “International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark”. It is the basis of the modern bottling industry that we know today, and Crown Cork & Seal is still on the New York Stock Exchange.