Hiway16 Magazine... about people and places in north-central British Columbia, Canada

		PAGE TWO OF THREE

The Coyle Egg-Safety Carton

200 million cartons per year were shipped from the New York plant alone in the 1920s, and many investors got rich but Joseph Coyle wasn't one of them. Always the inventor but seldom the businessman, he never earned more than a decent living from his good ideas.

Coyle was a natural inventor. At 16 years of age, in Walkerton, Ontario, he invented a wool carding machine and a boat propelled by bicycle pedals, both were new ideas at the time.

First Los Angeles egg carton factory which was rented by Coyle from the Brown Print Shop, located on San Pedres Street, L.A. February 1924.

After designing the machinery to make egg cartons by the millions, Joseph Coyle invented a match dispenser, a fruit box and a coin sorting machine. He employed a Mr. Bell to promote the coin sorter in England. Soon he lost touch with Mr. Bell and heard nothing more from England.

In 1959, Mr. Coyle's daughter visited a small general store in North London, England stocked with cast-iron coin sorters, obviously the same design created by her father more than 30 years earlier.

Joseph L. Coyle and Mr. Murphy (telegraph operator in Aldermere until 1913) standing in the streets in Aldermere. May 1911

In the 1940's at the age of 70, Coyle designed an even better egg carton and set up business with his son, Patrick, in New Westminster, BC. The business thrived until the introduction of the plastic egg carton which occured close to the date of Mr. Coyle's death on April 18, 1972 at age 100.

Egg cartons were a sideline for Mr. Coyle during the early years in the Bulkley Valley. He was a newspaper owner by day.






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