Oh, what I wouldn't give for a reliable memory. Turns out the "Poigne" was also produced in Germany, written up in a 1914 issue of Popular Mechanics & to top it all off, had received U.S. patent no. 1,051,562 on Jan. 28, 1913 -- the patentees were from the Netherlands.
All this came from my annotated copy of Sept. 2012 MVWC Newsletter, pg. 18.
At least I can consolidate & summarize this in the DATAMP entry with enough key words that a future "google" or "bing" search will find it.