Today in 1943, US Patent 2324312 A was issued, an invention of George J. Meyer Jr., Charles Steckling, and Joseph F. Classen, for their “Bottle Feeding Mechanism.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

The present invention relates to feeding mechanism adapted for use in connection with bottle handllng machines, such as cappers, fillers and labelers, although the invention is also applicable to the feeding of cans and other articles.

A bottle-handling machine, such as a capper, is commonly provided with a traveling carrier having means for holding the upstanding bottles in spaced relation to present the bottles successively to the operation of the machine. It is also common practice to provide the machine with a conveyer for conducting the bottles to the carrier, the successive bottles on the conveyer being usually in abutting or closely spaced relation. The spacing of the bottles on the carrier is ordinarily somewhat greater than the bottle diameter and because of this and other factors it is necessary to provide some means for controlling the feed of the bottles to the carrier, so as to suit the bottle spacing or bottle pitch of the carrier. Various mechanisms have heretofore been devised for this purpose, but they have been open to certain objections, such as relatively complicated construction and excessive rubbing and agitation of the bottles.

It is an object of the invention to provide an improved form of feeding mechanism which will effect the safe and accurate transfer of bottles to the traveling carrier of a capping machine or other bottle-handling machine, which will minimize rubbing or marking of the outer walls of the bottles, which will reduce agitation or jostling of the bottles, which is adapted for high-speed operation, which will accommodate bottles of different diameter, and which is capable of inexpensive manufacture and easy mounting.