300 moving parts to open a bottle of wine

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Published Mar 14, 2012

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London - Like all great inventions, it sounds crazy but it might just work.

First, take half a ton of scrap metal, several cogs, some chains, a couple of cannonballs - and lots of paper for the drawing board.

Then bolt them together into a 5ft structure resembling something out of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang workshop.

Next, select a fine wine (Primitivo somehow seems appropriate) and position the glass. Crank-start the gears by turning a handle, then stand back and leave the rest to gravity, physics and bonkers engineering.

Et volia! The mechanical corkscrew - a brilliant solution to a problem that didn’t really exist.

It opens the wine, pours it into the glass - and even saves the cork for recycling.

Now, propose a toast to creator Rob Higgs. He has just been commissioned to allow 25 of the bizarre contraptions to go on sale for between £75,000 and £100,000.

True, it won’t exactly fit in the kitchen drawer. With 300 moving parts, it will also need a bit more maintenance than the average corkscrew. But the company which commissioned the original intends to market them as centrepiece for funky hotels and restaurants.

Mr Higgs, 36, who lives in Penryn, Cornwall, was the brains behind a mechanical nutcracker, on show at the Eden Project nearby.

The steampunk corkscrew, as he calls it, took four years to build from salvaged bits and pieces, custom-made cast iron and recycled material.

The result (it could only be British) is a delightful combination of ideas that echo the creations of Heath Robinson, Goon Show co-founder Michael Bentine and Chitty Chitty’s Caractacus Potts, played by Dick Van Dyke.

Mr Higgs was inspired as a child by items in his grandfather’s workshop and has spent much of his life creating engineering art in the form of eccentric and often useless devices.

Yesterday he explained: “The majority of the corkscrew machine is stuff that I found in places like scrap yards, car boot sales and antique fairs. I also have a workshop which has tons of hoarded rubbish and piles of junk.

“It’s a useful brain exercise because it gives you ideas. It’s like going to a library.”

Perhaps superfluously, he adds: “I don’t really design my work in the standard way. I never have it all in my head. It’s an organic evolution. The corkscrew just grew and grew. I kept on going and saying ‘it could do this and that’.

“I just kept adding bits and making fantastical features.

“All the parts were moving so I had to remember which bits to keep clear, but that’s where the fun is, sticking bits on and chopping things up. You just keep going by putting things together and seeing if it works.”

Marcus Wilkinson, founder of conceptual design company Oneofone, commissioned Mr Higgs to make the corkscrew and is now building replicas. Only 25 will be produced.

“Because it is made from recycled material, there is a complex message behind the invention about how wasteful we are in society,” he said.

“There is a real occasion to opening a bottle of wine with a corkscrew.” - Daily Mail

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