William Painter was the inventor of the crown cork

Crown Cork

The crown cork , the first form of bottle cap, was invented by William Painter in 1891 in Baltimore. The company making it was originally called the Bottle Seal Company, but it changed its name with the almost immediate success of the crown cork to the Crown Cork and Seal Company...

 and the founder of Crown Holdings, Inc., a Fortune 500

Fortune 500

The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...

 company. He was born in Tridelphia, Maryland and moved to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 at the age of 20. He has over 80 patents

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

, including the common bottle cap

Bottle cap

Bottle caps are a type of closure used to seal the openings of bottles of many types. They can be small circular pieces of metal, usually steel, with plastic backings, and for plastic bottles a plastic cap is used instead. A bottle cap is typically colorfully decorated with the logo of the brand...

, the bottle opener

Bottle opener

A bottle opener is a device that enables the removal of metal bottle caps from bottles. More generally, it might be thought to include corkscrews used to remove cork or plastic stoppers from wine bottles....

, a machine for crowning bottles, a paper-folding machine, a safety ejection seat for passenger trains, and a machine for detecting counterfeit

Counterfeit

To counterfeit means to illegally imitate something. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product...

 currency

Currency

In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...

.