The most obvious thing about both of these patents is that they could not stand upright by themselves.
The Hamilton or Torpedo bottle was first conceived in the early 19th century, before the elaborate internal stoppered patent closures appeared and addressed the issue of the traditional closure method of a cork. In the past, the issue of pressure loss within bottled aerated waters due to the drying out of bottle corks over a period of time was considerable, especially on the long haul out to the colonies. This was overcome by the need for the Hamilton and the Maugham to always lie down, thus keeping the cork continuously wet and well sealed. Their egg like shape inherently made them very strong also, a big advantage when bottling high pressure aerated waters. Hamilton’s were only used moderately in W.A. and Maugham’s even less, except by Crowder and Letchford who used Maugham’s as their favoured bottle during the 1880’s. Maugham’s were very popular in other parts of Australia however, especially S.A. Another reason for their lesser use in W.A. was due to our population profile, which increased very steeply in the 1890’s with the discovery of gold and at this time, Hamilton’s and Maugham’s were already on their decline.