Superman hated Zip Tops- Jay Morton invents stay-tabs

[hemmings]

Was chasing down 1st Seminole War soldier journal leads and found a short history of Jay Morton and him coming up with "Faster than a speeding bullet" etc for the first cartoon Superman script he wrote..... And then one day at the beach he cut his foot on a pulltop in the sand.....

article- https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xp ... story.html

his obit from 2003 below

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/o ... uaries.usa


Thinking about this a minute.... The cover of the new BC&BC is starting to look like a trap for Superman... Starting to wonder if Tim and Keith might have been working with Lex Luther or something?

[kamsquared]

I think The Guardian is mixing up several different "Jay Mortons".

There was a Jay Morton who was a packaging engineer and had some patents for an "Easy Open and Reclosable Container" in the early 1990's. He also had some other packaging related patents but he didn't invent the sta-tab. The sta-tab was invented by Daniel Cudzik at Reynolds Metals back in 1975. Jay Morton is not on any of the original sta-tab patents from the 1970s and I can't find anything that says he worked at Reynolds. He might have been at a different container company.

There was also a Jay Morton Beiler who was chemist that also had many drug patents.
This might be where the Guardian got the statement that "Jay Morton had over 30 patents....". The packaging engineer "Jay Morton" had about 7 or 8 patents.

It looks like the Superman "Jay Morton" is a different guy who worked for a comic book company back in the 1940's. He could have switched careers but seems odd he would go from being a comic book dude to a packaging engineer when he was in his 70's. He died at the age of 92 back in 2003.

[menke]

Everybody wants to be the Ermal B. Fraze of the 1970's

[hemmings]

Not sure what to think- the 1997 Or 98 Sun Sentinal article says he did both and was 87 when he was at the conference they were describing?
I used the word Stay Tab so maybe he had a patent on a similar type of design... off to Google now...

There is A Jay Morton who had several container related patents in the 70s... but nothing quite like a stay tab at all... The older article from when he was alive would seem really unlikely to not get corrected if it conflated the Jays Morton together... will keep poking around got stuck with assignee and inventor tabs both checked so only getting him if his name is there in both sections...

https://patents.google.com/patent/CA203 ... +morton%22

[oldindiapaleale]

From Jay Morton's IMDb.com profile:
Trivia (2)
Created what is arguably the greatest tagline/opening sequence of all time: the "It's a bird/It's a plane/It's Superman!" sequence in "Adventures of Superman" (1952).
After he cut his foot at the beach on an old-style drinking-can pop-tab, he invented the current style where the tab remains attached to the can. As a result of his invention (U.S. Patent No. 5,062,542), he became fabulously wealthy.

[hemmings]

Searching that patent number got me to this- Jay Morton of Miami has a number of patents on containers and a film sprocket thing. I think its the same guy..... Who knows about IMDB... heck I even have a page there.....

https://patents.justia.com/patent/5062542 his name is near the bottom of this one.


https://patents.justia.com/inventor/jay-morton

[kamsquared]

The patent for the "Easy Open and Reclosable Container" (5062542) was from the 1990's. He definitely had that patent.
https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch ... df/5062542
This link has the graphics for the top design.

However, the original sta-tab that we are all thinking of is from the mid-70s.
I think his iMDB profile is either being mis-remembered or exaggerated.