Before 1858, there was exactly one way to get inside a can of food: a hammer and a chisel.

That’s not an exaggeration. It’s printed right on the cans. And it’s the reason a rusted, oddly shaped metal tool found in an old kitchen drawer can still stop people in their tracks today.

A Tool Nobody Could Identify

When someone posts a photo of an old metal object online with the caption “what is this thing,” it usually gets one of two reactions: instant recognition, or total confusion. A hooked, bayonet-like piece of metal recently made the rounds this way, pulled from a grandmother’s kitchen drawer. Guesses ranged from a fishing tool to a weapon. Almost nobody guessed right on the first try.

It was a can opener. Just not the kind anyone under 60 has ever used.

The 48-Year Problem Nobody Solved

Canned food is older than the Civil War. English inventor Peter Durand patented the tin can in 1810, giving armies and explorers a way to carry food that wouldn’t spoil. There was just one flaw in the plan: nobody invented an easy way to open it.

For decades, that meant a hammer and chisel — literally the instructions printed on the can. It wasn’t until January 5, 1858, that Connecticut inventor Ezra J. Warner patented the first American can opener, a “bayonet and sickle” design that pierced the lid with a spike, then sawed around the rim with a curved blade.

It worked. It also left a jagged, razor-sharp edge behind — which is exactly the kind of tool that turns up in a drawer decades later looking more like a weapon than a kitchen gadget.

Built for Soldiers, Not Home Cooks

Warner’s design caught on fast with the U.S. military, which used it to feed troops during the Civil War. But it never became a household staple. It was considered too dangerous for casual use — most home cooks still relied on their local grocer to open cans before they left the store.

That changed twelve years later. In 1870, fellow Connecticut inventor William Lyman patented a rotating-wheel design that let users crank a cutting wheel around the can’s rim instead of sawing by hand. It still required piercing the can first with a sharp spike — a step that eventually got engineered out of later models — but it was the first real step toward the smooth, one-handed can openers found in kitchen drawers today.

What We Know

Ezra J. Warner of Waterbury, CT patented the first American can opener on January 5, 1858 (U.S. Patent No. 19,063).
Before that, opening a can required a hammer and chisel — instructions were printed directly on early cans.
Warner’s opener was used by the U.S. military during the Civil War but was too dangerous for widespread home use.
William Lyman of Meriden, CT patented the first rotating-wheel can opener on July 12, 1870 (U.S. Patent No. 105,346), laying the groundwork for modern designs.
The tin can itself predates the can opener by roughly 48 years.

Why This Matters

It’s a small story, but it taps into something bigger: how much of daily life runs on inventions so old and so ordinary that people have completely forgotten who built them, or why. The tool in that kitchen drawer isn’t a mystery weapon — it’s a direct link to a 19th-century engineering problem that took nearly half a century to solve, and it explains why an object designed to feed Civil War soldiers ended up quietly rusting next to Grandma’s silverware.

The can opener nobody could open a can without eventually got replaced. But somewhere, in a drawer just like that one, the original is still waiting to surprise someone else.