America 250 Ohio: Celebrating the Innovative Mind of Ermal C. Fraze

February’s America 250-Ohio celebration theme, Ohio Works: Innovation & Industry, put a spotlight on the ideas and entrepreneurs who helped shape Ohio’s industrial landscape. Through the America 250-Ohio Commission, communities across the state are highlighting stories of creativity, manufacturing, and problem-solving. Here at Wright State University’s Special Collections & Archives, one story that resonates strongly with that theme is the history of Ermal C. Fraze and his company, the Dayton Reliable Tool Company.

Ermal “Ernie” Fraze was a machinist, business owner, and most importantly, a determined innovator. Born in Indiana in 1913, Fraze later moved to Ohio and began his career as a machine tool operator. In 1949, with a small loan from his wife, Martha, he opened Dayton Reliable Tool in Dayton. The company manufactured tools and machinery for major clients including NASA, General Electric, Ford, and Chrysler.

Fraze’s most famous invention grew out of a moment of everyday frustration. At a family picnic in 1959, he realized he had forgotten his “church key” can opener. A church key is a metal tool with one hooked end to remove bottle caps and one triangular pointed end to puncture flat top can. Fraze, with no easy way to open his beverage, resorted to using his car bumper. Convinced there had to be a better solution, he began experimenting. The result was the “pull-top,” an aluminum tab that could be lifted and removed to open a can. The design quickly gained traction, and eventually more than seventy-five percent of beer brewers in the United States adopted it.

Innovation continued. In 1977, responding to concerns about litter and injuries from detached tabs, Fraze patented the push-in, fold-back “pop-top.” Unlike earlier designs, this tab remained attached to the can, and it is still the basic design used on canned beverages today. The success of this invention and the machinery that produced it propelled Dayton Reliable Tool, now known as DRT Manufacturing Company, into continued growth as a precision component manufacturer and systems integrator.

The collection, MS-447: Ermal C. Fraze and the Dayton Reliable Tool Company Records, preserves this story of ingenuity and industry in rich detail. Materials include newspaper clippings, magazine articles, scrapbooks, correspondence, photographs, and personal items. Most of the collection documents Dayton Reliable Tool and its manufacturing legacy, while a small portion relates to the Fraze Pavilion, the 4,300-seat outdoor venue in Kettering named in Fraze’s honor.

As Ohio celebrates Innovation & Industry, the collection offers a window into how one Ohio entrepreneur identified a wide-spread problem and engineered a practical solution that transformed the food and beverage industry worldwide. For researchers interested in manufacturing history, regional entrepreneurship, industrial design, or everyday innovation, the Fraze collection provides a compelling place to start.

The collection is open and available for research. We invite students, scholars, and community members to explore the materials and discover how Ohio works through ideas, industry, and invention.