Kirsten Pipe Company

Kirsten Pipe Company is a manufacturer founded in 1936 in Seattle, United States, known for its aluminum-bodied pipes. The pipe it produces departs from the classic single-piece briar mold: it is a disassemblable arrangement consisting of a metal cooling body, a separate bowl that screws onto that body, and a drain valve at the body's end. The brand continues to operate in the city where it was founded, in the hands of the founding family.

From the Wind Tunnel to the Pipe

Frederick Kurt Kirsten (1885-1952) was born in Germany, emigrated to America in 1902, graduated from the University of Washington in 1909, and worked at the same institution as a professor of aeronautical engineering. He proposed, in the late 1930s, the construction of the wind tunnel that still bears his name at the university today; his work on the cycloidal propeller is known as the Kirsten-Boeing propeller.

The pipe, too, is a product of the same engineering habit of mind. When his doctor advised him to quit smoking, Kirsten chose instead to design a device: he worked on a mechanism that would keep tar out of the way with the moisture that reaches the mouth while smoking. The solution he arrived at in 1936 turned into both a patent application and the company that bears his name.