For the past century, the contour Coca-Cola bottle has been a global American icon.
It’s an icon whose history began in Terre Haute when the Root Glass Works obtained a patent for its design on Nov. 16, 1915.
In a celebration of the bottle’s 100th anniversary, the Coca-Cola Co. affirmed its connection with Terre Haute on Wednesday in front of the Vigo County Historical Museum.
“It’s the world’s most recognized consumer package,” said Todd Marty, Coca-Cola’s Indiana market unit food service and on-premise director. “I think a lot of times folks forget that there is so much history here in Vigo County and this is a big part of it and something to be extremely proud of,” Marty, an Indiana State University graduate, said while standing in the museum’s front lawn at 1411 S. Sixth St.
“Just a few blocks away, 100 years ago the contour bottle that everybody knows was born,” Marty said.
A commemorative Coca-Cola bottle will be available today at participating retailers. Coke will give 25 cents for every case of the commemorative bottles sold through Nov. 30 to the Vigo County Historical Museum. The company will present a check to the museum during the Miracle on 7th Street event in Terre Haute in December, Marty said.
Commemorative bottles were also sold for $6 per six pack at the celebration event Wednesday, with all proceeds going to the museum.
Marylee Hagen, executive director of the historical museum, said the museum needs to raise $3 million to move into its new location of the former Glidden Furniture building at 929 Wabash Ave. The museum will be able to take advantage of an additional $1.2 million in tax credits and sale of its current property for the new location, Hagen said. The museum, which has staged some silent fundraising, intends to start a public fundraising campaign next month, she said.
“We are thrilled Coca-Cola threw a wonderful party for the 100th anniversary of the bottle. The Root family got 5 cents per case of bottles produced, which became a fortune for their family. This is a great boon to us to receive 25 cents per case for five months, which is a wonderful generous gesture from the Coca-Cola company,” Hagen said.
The historical society was organized in 1922 and has been at its Sixth Street location since 1958, Hagen said.
“Terre Haute is on the map because of the Coke bottle,” said Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett. “Wherever it may be discussed or if someone asks. ‘Hey, what is the story behind that?’, Terre Haute gets mentioned, so that is a very positive thing,” Bennett said.
John S. Root represented the Root family at the celebration. Root’s great grandfather was Chapman J. Root, who owned the Root Glass Works where the contour bottle was designed and produced. John Root is a fourth-generation member of the Root Co. and a member of the Root Family Foundation, based in Ormond Beach, Fla., and operated by 31 family members. John Root’s father, Chapman S. Root, moved the family business from Terre Haute to Florida in 1951.
“One hundred years of a special icon like the Coca-Cola bottle is indeed very special,” Root said Wednesday before the celebration’s start. “There are not too many companies that have such a global symbol as this” contour bottle, he said.
“The team of people - Earl R. Dean, Alexander Samuelson, T. Clyde Edwards and a few others (along with Root Glass Works owner Chapman J. Root) where instrumental in getting the bottle to fruition. You can have a great design and great sketch, but it takes a team of experts to make the bottle in a mold and get it out and make sure it is structurally sound,” Root said.
“I think everybody did their job. I was born in 1958, so the stories [of the bottle’s creation] were passed down to me by my father Chapman S. Root. We always knew that Earl R. Dean actually had the sketch on it,” Root said.
While a book — “The Man Behind the Bottle: The Origin and History of the Classic Contour Coca-Cola Bottle as Told By the Son of its Creator” — was written to give the design credit to Dean, Root said his “analogy on it is that Neal Armstrong didn’t go to the moon, but had a little help from NASA, so it takes a village to get everyone up there. Just like any company, there are so many people behind the scenes,” Root said.
The contour bottle is sold in 207 countries worldwide, said Ted Ryan, Coca-Cola’s director of heritage communications.
“We like to say it was a team that did that bottle, and the bottle could not have been done without every single member of the team,” Ryan said. “The Root family played a huge role. Don’t ever forget for a second that [Chapman J. Root] was a glass manufacturer and knew the ins and outs. Alexander Samuelson, the shop foreman, knew everything too. It took every member of the crew to pull together than fantastic bottle.
“We knew that [Earl R.] Dean drew the sketch of the bottle. There is no question that Earl Dean drew that sketch. We have always maintained that it was a team that pulled together the bottle. The difficulty for the longest time was the name on the patent — Samuelson — was attributed with the bottle. Over the years we have tried to make sure everybody has credit because everybody deserves credit,” Ryan said.
Coca-Cola purchased the contour bottle sketch from the Dean family, Ryan added. The Root Glass Works factory, where the bottle was designed, no longer stands, as it once did on the northeast corner of Third and Voorhees streets in Terre Haute.
Ryan said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker recently called the bottle “a symbol of American enterprise. It really is.” As an example, Ryan said small Coke contour bottles are now also being produced in Yangon, Myanmar. “This shape that was invented in Terre Haute 100 years ago is sort of the symbol of America around the world and is a symbol of enterprise around the world,” Ryan said.
Ryan said Coke’s creative brief sent to glass companies required that the bottle be recognizable “broken on the ground and by feel in the dark.”
In April 1915 that brief was sent to eight to 10 glass companies, which had their own design shops, Ryan said. “We know of at least eight, the last two we are not quite sure of. The Root Glass Works received it and came up with the shape that was eventually patented,” Ryan said.
The original bottle was wider, but the bottles tried on a bottling line in Birmingham, Ala. wobbled and did not run through the bottling line properly. So the Root Glass company slimmed down the bottle and increased the width of the base of the bottle, Ryan said.
In addition, Ryan said a contract between Coke and Root Glass, signed in September 1916, specified the green color, 14.5 ounces and that the city name for the origin of the order should be printed on the bottom of the bottle. “It was done for where the order originated, not where the bottle was being made,” Ryan said.
“Originally it was because there was a deposit on the bottle, and the thought was the bottles would be migrated back to the city of origin, but after a couple of years everybody realized that was not going to work,” Ryan said. “But it created this huge American phenomena where there were city names on the bottom of the bottles all the way up until 1960. Kids would put a nickel in the machine and get a Coke and compare to see whose bottle was furthest away. It was a game called Far Away.”
“There some bottles for Hawaii, Alaska and a couple of international, such as Columbia,” Ryan said.
Coca-Cola now is part of the economic engine of Indiana, said Jane Grout, Indiana-Ohio general manger for Coca-Cola Refreshments.
“We have 1,400 employees with a payroll of $55 million. We have 11 system operations and produce 29 million cases” of Coca-Cola annually, distributed through 200 suppliers, Grout said.
Chris Mulvihill knows that first hand. He has worked for Coca-Cola at its Terre Haute distribution facility for the past 42 years. He started working for Coke at age 18. “When I started, pretty much everything was in returnable bottles and now nothing is in returnable bottles,” Mulvihill said. “Everything was glass. There were some cans, but not a lot.”
While the material has changed to plastic, the contour remains, he said. “I think the design is great,” Mulvihill said of the Coke bottle.