William Painter was born on November 20, 1838 in Triadelphia, Maryland, United States. He was the son of Dr. Edward and Louisa (Gilpin) Painter and was descended from early seventeenth-century Quaker settlers in Pennsylvania. During the first ten years of William's life his father farmed in various places in Maryland, the last being at Fallston, Harford County.
William Painter received education in Friends' schools in Fallston, Harford County and in Wilmington, Delaware.
In 1855 William Painter became an apprentice in a patentleather manufacturing plant in Wilmington. Here he remained for four years, during which time he gave the first evidences of inventive ability, patenting a fare box on August 3, 1858, and a railroad car seat and couch on August 31, of the same year. In 1859 he returned to Fallston, Maryland, where his father had become the proprietor of a general store, and postmaster, and for the succeeding six years he worked as his assistant. During this time he devised and patented two additional inventions, a counterfeit-coin detector, July 8, 1862 and a kerosene lamp burner, June 30, 1863.
Realizing now that his greatest interest lay in the field of mechanics and mechanical engineering, early in 1865 he moved with his family to Baltimore and there obtained the position of foreman of a machine shop. Here, in the succeeding twenty years he engaged in the construction and improvement of pumping and other machinery for his employers. He conducted, too, in their establishment his own inventive and consulting engineering work, devising upwards of thirty-five contrivances, including an automatic magneto-signal for telephones, a seed sower, a soldering tool, and several pump valves.
Soon after 1880 he turned his attention to bottle stoppers, and after several years of experiment obtained a patent, April 14, 1885, for a wire-retaining rubber stopper, the feature of which was that it could be removed easily with one hand. To market this invention, the Triumph Bottle Stopper Company was organized in Baltimore by Painter and his friends. Soon afterward, September 29, 1885, he obtained a patent for a so-called bottle seal, which was the first single-use bottle stopper, other than corks, ever offered the bottling trade. As this could be made and sold for ten times less than the "Triumph" stopper, the company organized to market the latter was disbanded and the Bottle Seal Company was organized to market the new invention. It met with ready approval and provided a large and profitable business in the succeeding seven years.
About 1891, however, Painter conceived the idea of a single-use cap stopper of metal, and on February 2, 1892, obtained patents for such a sealing device. These are the basic patents of the "Crown Cork" bottle caps used extensively throughout the world today. To market this latest invention, the Bottle Seal Company was reorganized as the Crown Cork and Seal Company, incorporated March 9, 1892, of which Painter was secretary and general manager until he retired in 1903. Besides the administrative work devolving on him he directed the experimental work as well, developing and patenting practically all of the machinery, not only to manufacture the caps but also to apply the caps to bottles.
William Painter was the founder of Crown Holdings, Inc. and a Fortune 500 company. In the course of his career he was granted some eighty-five patents for his 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 a machine for detecting counterfeit currency.
On September 9 1861, William Painter married Harriet Magee Deacon of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They had three children.
