Today in 1900, US Patent 642548 A was issued, an invention of Thomas Howard, for his “Bottle-Filling Machine.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:
My invention relates to machines for filling bottles with beer or other liquids and is designed to provide certain improvements in the construction of the same whereby the bottles may be fed to and removed from the filling devices from either side, the bottle-necks automatically sealed, except vas to the supply tubes and vent-pipes, when the bottles are in the filling position, the supply of liquid to the bottles automatically turned on and automatically cut off when the mouths of the filling tubes are reached, and the surplus liquid in the filling-tubes and vent-pipes automatically fed into the bottles as the latter are being removed from the filling-tubes.
