| William Painter | |
| Birth Date: | November 20, 1838 |
| Birth Place: | Triadelphia, Montgomery County, Maryland, United States[1] |
| Death Place: | Baltimore, Maryland, United States |
| Burial Place: | Druid Ridge Cemetery, Pikesville, Baltimore County, Maryland, United States |
| Occupation: | Inventor, engineer |
| Nationality: | American |
| Spouse: | Harriet Deacon Painter (m. 1861) |
| Parents: | Dr. Edward Painter Louisa Gilpin Painter |
William Painter (November 20, 1838 - July 15, 1906) was an American mechanical engineer, inventor and the founder of Crown Holdings, Inc., a Fortune 500 company. He most notably invented the crown cork bottle cap and bottle opener.
Painter was born in 1838 in Triadelphia, then a mill town in Montgomery County, Maryland to Dr. Edward Painter and Louisa Gilpin Painter.[2] He moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1865 to begin a career as a foreman at the Murrill & Keizer's machine shop. He worked with manufacturers to develop a universal neck for all glass bottles and started the Crown Cork & Seal Company of Baltimore in 1892 to manufacture caps that could be used to seal the universal necks.[3]
Painter patented 85 inventions, including the common bottle cap, the bottle opener, a machine for crowning bottles, a paper-folding machine, a safety ejection seat for passenger trains, and also a machine for detecting counterfeit currency.
He was inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.[4]