Description: Sign at top of machine reads: "'The Super Kleen' Bottle Washer built for Coca Cola Bottling Co. Cincinnati, Ohio. by The Liquid Carbonic Corporation." "The Super Kleen" bottle washer was put out by Loew Manufacturing Company, of Cleveland, Ohio, and was an improvement and merging of two previous types of washers (dormant and pressure). Mr. Charles Leow gives the following excellent description of this machine. The operation of the "Superkleen" is as follows: The operator at the feed end of the "Superkleen" takes the bottles out of the delivery cases, which are supplied to him on a rolling gravity conveyor, and places them onto a feeding table. This table moves intermittently upward and the row of bottles slided out into the steel pockets. They are then carried up into the machine and as they enter it each bottles receives a washing inside and outside with reclaimed warm water. This reclaimed water has then performed its function and is run into sewer. They then pass through and are treated with several solutions of various degrees of strength and temperature. This travel requires twenty minutes, in which time all the dirt, grease, etc., is thoroughly dissolved and soaked up, to be then easily removed by the water brush of the "Superkleen" This water brush consists of five rows of spindles which travel up into the bottles and which partially lift them out of the steel pockets. When the spindles are traveling up through the bottles and down again, they receive a fan-like treatment under high pressure from the reclaimed water supplied by rinsing spindles. This pressure fan-like water treatment acts like a brush, inasmuch as it sweeps the entire bottle ten times from the lip of the bottle to the bottom, thus removing any remnant of dirt or impurity which has already been throughly loosened by the former intensive solution treatments. After the bottles have passed through these ten water brush treatments they receive three fresh water injections from three rows of spindles. These spindles also lift the bottle partially out of the steel pockets and back into same so that in actual operation each bottle receives six of these fresh water treatments - three up and three down. When the water brush and rinsing spindles thus left the bottles out of the pocket, they by means of a rounded tip on the spindles begin automatically to revolve, so that the water brush acts on the entire surface of the interior of the bottle sweeping any impurities still clinging to the walls thereof resistlessly before it down and out of the mouth of the bottles. The bottles then travel through the automatic sterilzing compartment. In this compartment each bottle receives an injection of distilled water, making the bottles absolutely sterile when they are delivered on the conveyor to the filling machine. The distilled water is furnished by the steam which heats up the bottles and which runs through a cooling coil, which is kept cold by the rinsing or reclaimed water. After all these intensive treatments, the bottles, no matter how dirty they have entered the "Superkleen" are delivered absolutely clean, sterile and sparkling, at the temperature of the cooling city water which is used on the outside for the cooling of the bottles. Through their entire travel from the end of the solution compartment to the discharge, the bottles are cooled with water of progressively decreasing temperatures in such a manner that there can be no breakage. All the water used by the city water rinsing spindles, as well as that for the outside cooling, is re-used in the water brush, and for the preliminary washing of the bottles before they enter the soaking compartments proper. In this manner not only all the water is used several times over, but the steam as well, which carries out the regenerative system of pre-heating and cooling to the highest degree of efficiency. This machine is most substantially built, is sturdy, neat and attractive in appearance. The "Superkleen" is built in sizes ranging from 24 to 180 bottles per minute and is guaranteed for a term of five years. Coca-Cola was concerned that straight sided bottles would be confused with imitators so they and bottlers asked glass manufacturers to create a design for a distinctive bottle. The Root Glass Company of Terra Haute, Indiana won the approval and the bottle was introduced in 1916. The contour bottle became one of the few packages ever granted trademark status by the US Patent Office View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B03F10_013_1
Subjects: Coca-Cola Bottling Company United (U.S.); Bottling machinery; Liquid Carbonic Industries Corporation
Places: Cincinnati (Ohio); Hamilton County (Ohio)