A look back at an ovoidal innovation and other work
The name of inventor Hiram S. Dotts is now less well known that it once was. So, too, are his inventions, two of which—perhaps Dotts’s most enduringly influential—are described here.
Dotts’s Egg-Opener
Be it known that I, HIRAM S. DOTTS, a citizen of the United States, residing at Thoburn, in the county of Marion, State of West Virginia, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Egg-Openers, of which the following is a specification. So begins the text to U.S. patent #696,016, granted March 25, 1902 to Hiram S. Dotts. Mr. Dotts’s description, despite dealing with a subject of great technical complexity, is nearly poetical. Dotts (and/or his lawyer, E.B. Stocking)
(That’s an excerpt from the article “Dots and Spots,” Published in AIR 14:5.)