Posted 11 years ago
smiata
(232 items)
The company founder, Dr. Allen DeVilbiss, invented the medical atomizer in 1887 for the throat. DeVilbiss's son Tom, took over the business in 1905, and wanted to diversify the company with a new line of perfume atomizers as well as his fathers medical atomizers. After WWI, soldiers came home from France with gifts of perfumers with ornate dispensers and the atomizer craze took off.
In the mid twenties, DeVilbiss sold as many as a million perfumers a year in America alone. They employed hundreds of employees, plus a few hundred part time local ladies who crocheted the bulb nettings.
DeVilbiss did not make the glass for their perfumers, only the hardware, cords, and bulbs for the atomizers. They designed the bottles where Steuben, Cambridge or Fenton glass factories would produce them in the types of glass specified by DeVilbiss. Favorites include the Steuben blue and gold Aurene atomizers that are signed DeVilbiss, and the Cambridge draped ladies. International companies also produced glass bottles for DeVilbiss.
Unfortunately the success didn't last. After fighting a depressed market for many years, the company discontinued manufacturing atomizers. The DeVilbiss company is still alive and well in Somerset, Pennsylvania, only now manufacturing medical equipment, compressors and paint sprayers.
