Genesis of the Squirt gun

Searching through US patents can yield some interesting results. I was looking through some of the earliest patents on record for inspiration for steampunk gadgetry. I now know that the squirt gun was patented in the United States in 1899 by Gustav Reimann as an "instrument for squirting liquids to be used principally by cyclists to ward off dogs or highway robbers."

In just over a hundred years we went from this:

To this :