George L. Falk from Brockton, Massachusetts filed several patents especially related to mobile refrigeration systems.[1] Nevertheless, he made an invention that was interesting for us: the double flue pipe.

Double flue pipe

 
Double flue pipe, courtesy Doug Valitchka

George L. Falk filed the application for this invention/patent on August 25th, 1958. Two years later on September 11th, 1962 the application was granted and expired 17 years later on September 11th, 1979.[2]

This invention relates to smoking pipes and provides a pipe of an improved double flue construction which prevents the saliva from wetting the smoking tobacco, and precludes the noisome taste and smell attendant thereon. The pipe of the invention is distinguished by a simple clean design and is constructed in but two parts, whereby its manipulation is easy and certain and it can he readily and uniformly manufactured at low cost.

A principal source of irritation, in pipe smoking, is the possibility and tendency for saliva to flow from the mouth down the smoke flue to the bowl, and wet the unburned tobacco at the bottom of the chamber. The wetting is progressive, the saliva rising by capillary action in the tobacco and producing what is commonly referred to as a wet heel. Characteristic of a wet heel are both a rotten taste and stinky smell, resulting from the interaction of the saliva and tobacco chemicals, and a choking of the pipe. These conditions are often mistakenly assigned by the smoked to a poor quality of pipe or an inferior grade of tobacco. And the smoker is likely to attempt to correct them by tamping or packing his tobacco which, while normally effective to improve a poor draw, serves only to worsen the wet heel choking, because wet tobacco packs tighter than dry.

Moreover a substantial proportion-it may be as much as half-of the tobacco is prevented from burning and hence is wasted. The wetting of the tobacco also necessitates frequent relightings of the pipe, which come as interruptions additionally inconveniencing and irritating the smoker.

The pipe of the invention eliminates this wet heel problem by means of an improved double flue construction whereby the saliva is effectively diverted from the smoke flue and conducted through a drain to a separate well, in and from which it may be separately stored and cleared. With this double flue, separate well construction the obnoxious taste and smell of the saliva-wet tobacco are eliminated, as are the necessity for relighting of and the waste of tobacco, in a wet smoke. Instead, all the tobacco in the bowl burns with natural flavor and smell and `to a dry ash, and upon such complete burning and after the ash is dumped it leaves a dry bowl.[2]

References