The Magnificent Aerosol Spray Can

By: Maury Roque

Introduction:

How often do we use aerosol spray cans? If your answer was often, you were wrong, as it should very well be extremely often. Aerosol spray cans are used on a day to day basis, whether its in the use of bug spray when taking your daily walk into the forest, or whether it’s shaving cream for the beard that you just noticed you had grown and you really need to get rid of. These little jewels of human creativity were first made possible in as early as the 1790’s, when self-pressurized carbonated beverages we’re developed in France. Though it was an invention, it took many individual inventors to create the aerosol spray cans we have today. From Perpigna to Robert H. Abplanalps, inventors kept improving the aerosol spray can until we finally got the clog-free, pump-mechanized, water-soluble hydrocarbon-activated cans we use today.

Discovery:

In 1837, a man by the name of Perpigna developed a container of soda that featured a valve. Bulky steel cans with valves were being tested, as early as 1862, but for the same bulkiness that was just mentioned, they could not be issued commercially as they weren’t the most convenient items to carry around. In 1899, a duo of brilliant scientists came up with a new way to propel fluids out of the can using methyl and ethyl chloride, and in 1927 a great engineer from Norway that went by the name of Eric Rotheim developed and patented the first aerosol can and valve that could hold and dispense products other than the reactors. During the later years of World War II, the Government of the United States funded scientific studies to develop a portable way for soldiers to deal with the elimination of malaria carrying. In 1943 Lyle Goodhue and William Sullivan, researchers of the Department of Agriculture, created a small aerosol can that was pressurized by fluorocarbon. It’s their design, in conjunction with the work of Robert Abplanalp, which makes products like Axe deodorant and hair spray possible. What Abplanalp’s work consisted of was the creation of a valve that enabled liquids to be sprayed from a can under the pressure of an inert gas, and this gas was first a fluorocarbon, but then became a water-soluble hydrocarbon after complaints that the fluorocarbons were depleting the ozone layer.

Biography:

Robert Abplanalp (1922– 2003) was born in New York City to Swiss immigrants. He studied mechanical engineering at Villanova University in his time before joining the army in 1943 to help out with the World War going on at the time. He’s best known for pretty much creating the spray cans we use today, and at the time of his death, he held over 300 patents relating to aerosol spray cans.


Impact on the World/Humanity:

His invention has been one of the inventions that we can imagine living without, but it does make life MUCH easier. The main uses of this invention are spray paints, a very popular choice for painting cars, instruments, city walls, and many other things, deodorant, which is heavily used by men to smell “good”, and insecticides, used to rid of those annoying bugs that bother you when out in the wilderness.

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