12

Foundations

Long before "Cork Pops", "Pop-A-Cork" and "Corkmaster",

there were several cork ejectors. The earliest may have been

the invention of John Henry Aubrey Stapley of Crosby House,

Horley, Surrey, England. A corkscrew was a necessity in the

Stapley household but perhaps there was a day when Stapley

couldn't find his corkscrew. He likely studied his bottle of wine

carefully and thought if he could just expand the air between

the wine and the cork, the cork would be forced out and he

could quench his thirst. For his invention he took a hollow

needle and attached a handle to it. The needle protruded

through the handle with a provision to attach a hand pump. His

patent application drawing shows an ordinary bicycle type pump

looming three times as large as the bottle itself. He could then

simply force the needle into the cork, stroke the pump, and the

cork would be forced out of the bottle. Stapley cautioned "It is

desirable not to have too great a length of flexible tubing, in

order to prevent the cork on the needle whipping round to an undesirable extent when

it is driven out of the bottle." There's that "uncontrolled ejection" again! Stapley also

made the suggestion that the hollow needle be constructed like a corkscrew so once

the cork was removed partially by pressure, the rest could be drawn in the "ordinary

way." Stapley was granted English Patent No. 1,321 in 1914 and United States Patent

No. 1,140,082 in 1915.

The idea of a self-contained unit appears to have originated in

Switzerland in 1918. Pius Hasler in St. Gallen created a simple pump

in which the body of the device was shaped to fit the contour of the

bottle neck and once in place, lowering and raising a knob at the top

would inject the required air. Hasler was granted German Patent

314451 for his "

Vorrichtung zum Öffnen von Korkverschlüssen von

Flaschen mittels Luftpumpe

" on September 10, 1918. He would not get

his Swiss patent until January 16, 1919 (No. 79.938). During this same

time, Hasler also invented a parachute toy and a clasping device for

trouser suspenders.

In 1921 Hans Bauer in Frankfurt,

Germany, was working along the

same lines as Hasler with his

Pneumatischer Korkenzieher

. In his invention a needle

is passed between the cork and the bottle neck then

air is injected with a standard air pump. Bauer was

granted German Patent No. 357,928 on September

20, 1921.