Passes-quickly

The Passes-Quickly is the trade name given by its inventor to , the Vegetable mill Marque become common noun, and indicates the domestic ustensil having “for object a system of Passoire which is intended for the work of the kitchen, and by means of which one arrives, more quickly and at a rate of a less effort to pass either vegetables, or the other edible ones”.

History

The March 31st 1928, is delivered with Mr Victor Simon, 125, rue du Polychène with Morlanwelz (Belgium), a Brevet of invention for strainer of fast action for vegetables and other edible by the Belgian ministry of the industry of work and the social welfare under the n° 348610. The mark Passes-Quickly is recorded the March 2nd 1928 and the first international recording intervenes the November 18th 1929.

“If one adopts this apparatus for culinary work, one can be able in one minute to make there pass the quantity of vegetables which is necessary for a meal of eight people, and this with very facilitated, without the disadvantage of making pass at the same time the skins and parts coriaces (beans, tomatos, etc) thanks to the spring which exerts its compression downwards. The device is moreover very solid, and lends itself to the treatment of any edible, mashed potatoes, compotes, preparation of pastry makings and so on”, one in introduction to the patent reads.

The industrial exploitation of this invention intervenes in 1929, by the meeting of Victor Simon and Richard Denis, hardware merchant of his state, to which it first yields half of its rights to its patent and its patents of improvement, for a sum of 100 francs Belgian of the time. They form, the March 31st 1929, a partnership under company name “Simon and Denis”, who will have as an aim “the manufacture and the sale of articles of household in general and, in particular, the exploitation of the patents n° 275276,351911,279509, referring to a mechanical strainer of fast action for soup, vegetables, etc of the mark “Passes-Quickly”, improvement n° 348610”. The company takes the shape of a public limit company in 1935 and settles in Carnières (Belgium), inaugurating the participation of the managers in the capital of the company: shares are held by the plant manager, the accountant, and the representatives commercial mainly.

The company will be declared in bankruptcy the March 6th 1978, fifty years after the date of the invention which justified it, and that, even if, meanwhile, other products came to pack the catalog: passes-quickly to removable handle, a Râpe with vegetable, a persillette, a Râpe with cheese, a Coffee mill of mark IVAP, an electric Mixer, etc the advertizing slogan remained and finds its source in the description even of the invention: “Passes-Quickly is a strainer but all the strainers are not Passes-Quickly”.

The history of this invention deserves to be told: it is noting the difficulties of his wife, teacher, to pass soup and time that it devoted to it, after the school and the corrections, that Victor Simon imagined to replace the discontinuous vertical effort of the rammer by a continuous horizontal effort and made, in its kitchen, the first sketch of this ustensil. This sketch made soon, within a framework, the principal part of the decoration of this kitchen, at the same time as the pride of the owners.

Discusses

It is practically the same history that Jean Mantelet tells, who asserted the invention of Mill-Vegetables, after being annoyed by a “mashed potato” weighed down of grumeaux and concoctée by his Fernande wife. This history it tells it in 1987, at 87 years, the Figaro Magazine, and details what will make a small collection later a few years: following badly crushed mashed potatoes, I built an industrial empire.

This industrial empire, it is the mark Mill-Vegetables, with ustensils which chop, crosses, pulverizes and… pass the cooked vegetables, with 4 models and 3 grids. But especially, in 1955, with the electric revolution, it is the Légumex mark which appears, financed by Mill-Vegetables, before changing into Moulinex in 1957: coffee mill electric, moulinette electric, electric picker, electric rotary rammer, electric mini-furnace,… from the ideas, Jean Mantelet will have some and will make them in disorder bear fruit with a commercial and advertizing genius without equal: Moulinex releases the woman, lucky find of Jean Mantelet, will mark one time, will even influence a company in full change, while contributing to the awakening by the women of the “female condition”.

But let us return at the beginnings: Jean Mantelet, on his side, deposited in 1932 an extremely detailed patent n° 732.100 and his diagrams having for object a potato-masher. One reads in the patent delivered by the Management of the Industrial property of the Ministry for the Trade and of the industry of the French Republic delivered on June 6th, 1932 and published on September 13rd, 1932, for the benefit of the company MANTELET and BUTCHER, residing in France which the idea is rests on what “on the one hand, the conical sieves singularly facilitate the passage through them of the matter to filter and, on the other hand, on what rotary helicoid surfaces forming the bodies of pressure to progressive action can function with a minimum of effort”. With this Mincer potato-masher, Jean Mantelet gives the name of “Moulinette”.

1928,1932. Did mantelet copy the drawings of Simon and Denis, or this same good idea it came four years away to two people, Mantelet with Bagnolet and Simon, in Morlanwelz, in circumstances presented like altogether rather similar?

It is there that one cannot make the saving in a legal shutter of importance: after a seizure, on October 10th, 1938, in various places of the Lyons agglomeration at the request of Simon and Denis, a legal action is started, which will last eight years. In first authority, Mantelet loses by decision of the County court of Lyon of June 9th, 1939, which decides that there is counterfeit and made defense continue the manufacture and the sale of mill-vegetables. The decision is confirmed in call on April 10th, 1940. Mantelet carries the business in cassation but the war puts a convenient bracket at this legal battle. March 26th, 1946, the civil court of the Court of appeal cancels the judgment delivered and on May 2nd, 1947, the Court of Dijon gives reason to the company Mill-Vegetables: the brilliances lawyers of Mantelet went to seek a law of 1844 and if counterfeit is not disputed - it are necessary to see to the red button out of wooden which allows the catch in hand of the crank -, Simon and Denis are déboutés not to have made manufacture their product on the French soil within three year as from the date of filing (article 32 of the law of July 6th, 1844). And deposed their rights, on the French territory. This law of 1844, one sees it, aimed at protecting national work and it is in vain that one would estimate that the legislator should have modified it for a long time, taking into account in particular the agreements of 1925 which outlined the international law of the patents and the models.

External bond

Site dedicated to passes-quickly, biography, history of the invention and from its marketing
Passes-quickly in the Walloon daily newspaper , exposure and retrospective.

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