20

In his first “Cork Extractor” patent filed

when residing in Peoria, Illinois, Gilchrist

wrote, “The purpose of the invention is to

provide a cork-extractor simple in

construction and convenient and effective

in operation with which by one

movement of an operating-lever the cork

is extracted from the bottle, and by

returning the lever to its normal position

the, cork is removed from the corkscrew

without injury to the cork.”

In his second application filed while in Jersey

City, New Jersey, Gilchrist had some second

thoughts about his first patent. It is odd that this

application was filed on May 19, 1888 and in the

description he refers to his earlier application with

“I made application for Letters Patent on January

5, 1888, Serial No. 259,829, since patented to me

June 19, 1888, No. 384,839” – a date later than

this application. Jack Bandy suspects there were

some revisions done before the May 19

application was patented and the revisions

included the reference to June 19 patent.