What are Codd bottles?

[scduckett]

Hi all, I just got back from Destin FL and was in a small shop there which had several CODD bottles for sale. What are these? What was the marble for? I would have bought some because I have seen them mentioned on this site but wasn't sure I would have been getting my money's worth. The shop was asking about $7-9 for each. (My husband just came in, read the post, and said they were soda bottles (?) that he saw in Japan in the early fifties/sixties.[sm=rolleyes.gif]
Susan

 

[woody]

Hiram Codd and the Codd bottle
Hiram Codd, despite his American first name, was British. He worked all his life in the soft drinks industry. In the 1870s he designed and patented a system for keeping fizzy drinks in bottles with a glass marble stopper. When the bottle is filled, pressure in the bottle keeps the marble against a rubber washer at the top making a seal. To open the bottle, the marble is pressed down into the neck chamber. Many Codd bottles, as they are known, were broken by children in order to get hold of the marble - even though at one stage Codd patented an oval-shaped marble to make them less attractive to children.

The man who discovered how to manufacture carbonised mineral waters was Joseph Priestley in 1772. Jacob Schweppe was the most successful of the early producers, starting his Bristol business in 1794 using earthenware bottles. The problem with these bottles was the build-up of gas inside - the only way to stop the gas blowing out was to lay the bottles on their sides, which kept the cork wet.

The desire to be able to see what was inside the bottle led to the use of glass and William Hamilton's egg-shaped bottle was developed in 1840. This had to be laid on its side and so tended to roll off shelves and counters. The Hamilton bottle was eventually replaced by Codd's bottle, which could stand upright.

Hiram Codd worked at first with Harry Barrett in Camberwell in London. One problem with making his bottle was that the marble stopper had to be larger than the diameter of the neck of the bottle. It was in 1876, when he worked with a Barnsley glassblower, Dan Rylands, that Codd found the answer. They made the neck of the bottle in such a way that the ball was prevented from falling back into position when the bottled was emptied. The Codd bottle became standard in much of Europe and throughout the British Empire and went on being used until about 1930.

Hiram Codd died in 1887 and is buried in London's Brompton Cemetery.

 

[Mark Potten]

Susan & (Woody) take a look at my website - all your questions will be answered.
Hope this helps

 

[kumtow]

Hi Mark,
I had a look at your web page and it looks very interesting however, nearly all your links don't seem to work. I found your website page link in your forum profile as you did not place in with your above reply to this post. Is this link still the current one???