Today in 1963, US Patent 3071403A was issued, an invention of William J. Hohenstein and Helmut W. Preu, assigned to Schaefer Brewing Co., for their “Crowned Bottle Rejection Pin For Bottle Pick Up Apparatus.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

The present invention relates to a crowned bottle rejection pin for use on apparatus which picks up empty bottles for moving them from place to place.

A conventional apparatus for removing empty bottles, such as beer bottles or the like, from cases for transferring them to a conveyer for movement into a washing machine, has a plurality of heads thereon which have an expandable rubber sleeve within them. The heads are connected to a source of compressed air so that when the heads are lowered over the tops of the bottles in a case of empty bottles, the compressed air is fed to the heads and it expands the rubber sleeves around the tops of the bottles. The apparatus is then operated to lift the empty bottles from the case or the like and move them to a conveyer.

It often occurs, however, that caps or crowns will be placed on the tops of the bottles after they are empty, and when the heads on the bottle removing apparatus move down around the tops of the empty bottles, they will pick up the crown as well as the empty bottle and transport it to the conveyer to the washing machine. The crown will remain on the bottle in the washing machine and prevent a brush spindle which cleans the inside of the bottle as well as the rinsing tube from entering the bottle. This malfunction results in the spindles and rinse tubes being bent out of shape, requiring a thirty to fifty minute shutdown of the machine to replace the bent parts.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a pin which can be placed within the heads on the bottle removing apparatus which will prevent the head from picking up an empty bottle which has a crown thereon, yet which will not prevent the head from picking up a bottle without such a crown thereon.