55
Here's an interesting twist.
This is Edwin Walker's U. S.
Patent No. 611,046 issued
September 10. 1898. The
advertising on it is
―
Bradford United States Metallic Packing Co., Bradford.
‖
The
company manufactured packing for steam engines. The corkscrew is an advertising
piece and not meant to be used for removing packing.
Patents
The earliest U. S. patent for a packing extractor having
some resemblance to a corkscrew is Hiram Smade's U.
S. Patent No. 118,823 issued September 12, 1871. The
title of his patent is
―
Improvement in Instruments for
Extracting Packing from Stuffing Boxes.
‖
The Manistee, Michigan resident's invention is a
reversible tool which has a
―
worm or screw
‖
on one
end and an
―
ordinary packing hook
‖
on the other.
Smade suggests using a
―
worm, or, preferably, a deep-
threaded gimlet-pointed screw.
‖
In their U. S.
Patent No.
665,073 dated
January 1, 1901,
inventors John
Doyle and
Henry Squibb of
Hoboken, New
Jersey make several mentions of a
―
corkscrew
‖
in their
―
Packing-
Extractor
‖
. They wrote
―
Assuming the stuffing box to open upward
around a vertical rod, we employ a tool analogous to a
corkscrew
on
one end with fine screw-thread on the other
‖
and
―
To engage our
corkscrew
with the packing, the gland is liberated and removed by sliding it backward
on the piston-rod.
‖
They further state
―
H
is an important member, which we designate as a
corkscrew
, but
which may well be somewhat stouter than the ordinary device of that name
‖
and
―
The
