194
Tongues vs Prongs
Wolfgang Tischler of Bad Neustadt, Germany got German patent number
8,704,060 on March 18, 1987 for his prong cork remover. On June 13, 1989 he was
granted United States Patent Number 4,838,128 under the title
“
Bottle Opener
”
.
Tischler
‟
s idea of using prongs to insert on either side
of the cork to remove it was nothing new. The idea had
been around for over 100 years. Tischler complained
that previous examples were difficult to use as each
metal tongue, as he called them, must be freely inserted
and it takes two hands to accomplish it. Once one
tongue is inserted, the other must be fixed in place and
the whole assembly wiggled to get the tongues in place.
This then may cause a loose cork to be pushed into the
bottle.
Tischler solved the problem by constructing a guide sleeve that can be placed
over the bottle neck. He contended that once the sleeve is in place, the sliding
halves of the top assembly with prongs attached, can be shoved down
individually between the cork and the bottle. The prongs bulge inward keeping
the cork jammed in place and thus easy to extract.
It is interesting to note that in his patent application, Tischler refers to his
invention a number of times as a
“
corkscrew
”
even though there is not
“
screw
”
present.
