About Corkscrews
Editor's note: This rather
lengthy, but interesting article appeared in the New York Sun in 1884.
Photos have been added and details can be found below this
article.
The corkscrew is a contrivance to
facilitate the removal of corks from bottles. When a cork protrudes from the
neck of the bottle far enough to admit of grasping it with the hand or
clinching it with the teeth, a corkscrew is unnecessary. But when a cork is
flush with the bottle's mouth, or, through unskillful manipulation, has become
lodged down in the neck, a corkscrew is not only a convenience but almost a
necessity. The bottle may be emptied of its liquid contents by crowding the
cork down through the neck with a penholder or any other suitable article that
may be at hand, but this method of opening a bottle is generally regarded as
inelegant.
There are several kinds of
corkscrews. That which has been the longest in use is the simplest. For several
hundred years it was the best, until a genius added an improvement which
brought it to perfection. The primeval corkscrew consisted of a wire, pointed
at one end, twisted into a spiral with about five turns tempered to give
rigidity to it, and provided with a wooden handle like that of a gimlet. The
spiral part of the wire was about two inches long after being twisted, the part
left straight was about the same length, and the wooden cross piece was round,
and about three inches in length and half an inch in diameter. The handle was
made fast to the metal by putting the wire through a hole in the wood and
clinching it. The metal was not burnished, nor was the wood polished or
painted. It is safe to say that there never was a corkscrew job which could not
have been accomplished with one of these primeval corkscrews.
The name of the inventor of the
corkscrew has not been handed down to these generations.
He
lived before the days of letters patent. It is held be a certain school of
theorists that he was no other than Archimedes. The similarity of the corkscrew
to the spiral of Archimedes is r= a theta. The corkscrew can not have a
constant equation, for the pitch varies not only in different screws, but in
the different spirals of the same screw. A corkscrew fashioned after the
equation of the spiral of Archimedes, with important modifications, would be
serviceable; but there seems to be no sufficient reason for believing that
Archimedes invented the corkscrew.
An important improvement in
corkscrews is mentioned in the foregoing. In order to comprehend its value, the
practical use of the ordinary corkscrew must be understood. The bottle is
grasped by the neck with the left hand, the top of the cork is pricked with the
point of the spiral, and about six or seven half twists are given to the
corkscrew. The body of the bottle is then
gripped between the knees , and a lifting force is applied to the
corkscrew and through it to the cork. The removal of the cork is accompanied by
a sound which may be fairly imitated by putting the left forefinger in the
mouth with its end against the inner surface of the right cheek, inflating the
cheeks, and then removing the finger by a quick push against the yielding right
hand corner of the mouth. His perfected corkscrew has the blunt end of the wire
brought back through the wooden handle and twisted around the stem of the
corkscrew till it comes down to the top of the spiral, where it is would into a
concentric coil. When the spiral has sunk into the cork the blunt end of this
coil strikes against the cork near its periphery, and with the purchase thus
obtained the cork is turned around in the neck of the bottle and withdrawn far
more gently than with the unimproved corkscrew [see Clough Patent
below]. A good article of the perfected pattern may be bought for about
fifteen cents in almost any general store in the country. In a cutlery
establishment in the city the price would not be over seventy-five
cents.
There are other complications
which are intended to increase the usefulness of the corkscrew or make it more
conveniently portable. A metallic contrivance
shaped
like the bow of a jews harp, is substituted for the wooden handle, and the stem
of the spiral is fastened between the ends of the bow with a pin in such a
manner that the implement may be shut up like a pocket knife. This pattern of
portable corkscrew is adapted for excursion or picnics, where there may be
bottles of milk to be opened [see "Barnes 1884 Patent" below]. There is
also a very elaborate kind of corkscrew sold in some of the drug stores and
cutlery establishments. It is nickel plated and looks as formidable as a toy
steam engine. It is so constructed that after it has been adjusted the engineer
has only to keep on twisting and the cork will be hoisted high and dry [see
"Chinnock 1884 Patent" below]. There are a few rules regarding the use of
the corkscrew which are generally observed by the elite. The place for the
corkscrew is not by the side of the hostess's plate. Champagne bottles are not
opened with a corkscrew, nor condensed milk cans, nor cocoanuts. Any person who
has tried to take small cucumber pickles from a bottle with a corkscrew will
ever afterward endeavor to have a pickle fork at hand, if he does not go to the
extreme of having the pickles removed from the original package before they are
brought to the table. It may be set forth as general rule that any attempt to
utilize the corkscrew for any purpose other than the removal of corks will
result in embarrassment, and had best not be tried except in
privacy.
Editor's note: Further
information on the corkscrews referenced in the above article are found
below.
Clough 1876 Patent
On February 1, 1876, William
Rockwell Clough was granted U. S. Patent No. 172,868 for his corkscrew with
twisted wire. The example pictured here is a "Duplex Power Corkscrew." Clough's
first claim was "A corkscrew formed of a single piece of wire, a portion of the
wire being formed into a screw, its upper part formed into a handle, and its
free end utilized to strengthen the shank between the handle and
screw.
Barnes 1884 Patent
Photo courtesy of Josef
L'Africain
U. S. Patent No. 299,100 was
issued to Joshua Barnes on May 27, 1884. Barnes' fourth claim was "A corkscrew
with a folding handle, provided with convex jaws fitting into corresponding
concavities in the shank of the screw-coil, and provided with a hook or hooks."
The hooks could be used as a wire breaker or as the writer of the 1884 suggests
for opening bottles of milk!
Chinnock 1884 Patent
Photo courtesy of Milt
Becker
This is Charles Chinnock's U. S.
Patent No. 299,738 issued June 3, 1884. The writer of the 1884 article compares
it to a "toy steam engine." Chinnock's first claim was "The combination, in a
corkscrew, of a screw having a left-hand and a right-hand thread, a handle
running upon said left-hand thread, and a bridge having its top formed into a
sleeve, through which said screw passes, and its base terminating in a circular
collar."
