The Counter-Stirrup Bottle Opener: Press the Bottle Up and the Yoke Comes Off

"The object of this invention is to provide ready and convenient means for removing the wire yokes from the corks of bottles confining effervescing liquids; and it consists in a metallic stirrup or casting attached to the counter or placed in any convenient position, so constructed that by a slight pressure the yoke is forced from the cork of the bottle, when the gas immediately forces the cork from the neck, as I will proceed to describe." "The pressure of the gas is frequently so great that the end of the yoke is embedded in the end of the cork, rendering it extremely difficult to remove it by simply pressing it with the end of the thumb and fingers. By grasping the bottle and pressing the bars H H of the yoke against the lugs E E of the stirrup the yoke is readily forced off the cork."

**Stirrup.** Cut 30 cm of 20 × 3 mm mild steel flat bar. Mark a 10 cm middle as the plate and drill it for two wood screws. In the vice, bend each end down and outward so the ears make about 30° with the plate, checked with the protractor, and leave a gap between them a little wider than the bottle's neck. Bend the last 1 cm of each ear inward as a lug. File all edges smooth. **Mount.** Screw the plate under the front edge of a hardwood shelf or bench, ears hanging down. **Yoked bottle.** Chill a bottle of soda water, pour it into a clean beer bottle, and press a tapered cork in firmly. Twist a wire ring tight round the neck below the lip. Bend a staple-shaped yoke from galvanised wire that crosses the cork's top, with its legs bent into eyes that turn on the ring, as Trimble describes. **Test.** Wearing safety glasses, hold the bottle by its body, push its neck up between the ears so the yoke's bars bear on the lugs, and press. The yoke is forced off and the cork leaves downward, under the shelf. Try pushing a second yoke off with your thumb and compare.

**Charles B. Trimble** of New York, New York, received US 119,802, dated 10 October 1871. His stirrup was a plate C with screw holes, fixed under the counter's shelf, ears D D angled downward and outward at about thirty degrees, and lugs E E on their inner sides. The yoke F was shaped like a staple, turning on a wire G round the neck. His claim is the plate, ears and lugs together. **Honest limits.** Bent flat bar stands in for his stirrup or casting, and a hand-wired beer bottle of re-corked soda water for a bottle filled under pressure, so the gas is weaker and the cork may not fly. The notebook's speed is a ceiling, not a prediction; its pressures, sizes and mass are examples. Your opening is the result.