Fountain Pen History: March 2014

March 31, 2014

Freud’s Fountain Pen

        The pre-2003 Zoss List archive on eScribe is totally, irretrievably lost, so here’s a blast from the past, namely from 1998. Carlos Henrique Jacob wrote on Zoss on Mar 30, 2002, “My fountain pen drive (Freud would call it a sex drive) began a few years ago when I found an old Parker 51 that belonged to my grandfather”. Well, let’s talk about Papa Freud’s pen drive. The Sigmund Freud Museum was used as a film set in David Cronenberg’s film A Dangerous Method, and more recently, in the first episode of Simon Schama’s PBS series, The Story of the Jews,
both of which included some scenes showing Sigmund Freud’s collection of antiquities in his psychoanalytic consultation study, and it made me think of something I posted on Zoss on Dec 19, 1998. I posted about one of the actual fountain pens that Freud owned. This is what I wrote.
       “Here’s an interesting pen-sighting for all those living in or traveling to the Washington DC area before Jan 16, 1999. You might want to take advantage of the opportunity to see a show of Sigmund Freud manuscripts and his collection of ancient artifacts at the Library of Congress. The show continues at the LC until the above date and then moves on to New York, Vienna, and Los Angeles. Included among the other articles on display is Freud’s fountain pen!
       “More information on the exact show dates can still be found online. [I can’t believe that this link is still alive!] And there’s a review of the show in the New Yorker on Nov 9, 1998, on page 53. The reviewer mentions, “a stark, glass-enclosed room in which Freud’s fountain pen, his spectacles and case, and sundry archeological talismans are laid out on a desk”.
       “Also, in case you are interested, there is a book on Freud’s art collection by Lynn Gamwell and Richard Wells, Sigmund Freud And Art: His Personal Collection Of Antiquities (1989). There are pictures on pages 14 and 28 showing his consultation rooms in Vienna and London with his desk and all the artifacts laid out on it, and standing upright in a little alabaster vase is his pen.”
        And Bart Grossman asked, “Please don’t leave us in suspense. What kind of pen is it?”. Dave Lambert wrote, “C’mon, cut the suspense! What kind of pen is it?”. Nancy Handy wrote, “How big was it?”. Bernadette Landolf-Fritsche wrote, “I bet his PEN was huge”. Brent Wilson wrote, “I’m suffering from a chronic case of pens envy. Sorry, couldn’t resist”. So I finally put them all out of their misery.
       “Oh, sorry. Did I neglect to mention what kind of pen Freud used? Call it a Freudian slip. First of all, you have to understand that I live up in the mid-western prairies of Canada, so I have not had an opportunity to attend the show at the Library of Congress, and I haven’t seen the pen that they have on display there. But from the two photos in the book about Freud’s art collection, one photo of his consulting room in Vienna, and the other of his consulting room in London, his pen appears to have been an early, red hard rubber Mont Blanc Safety pen, one from the 1910s or 20s. And what size is it? It’s a pen with perhaps a #8, #10, or #12 nib. It’s an enormous, almost tumescent, all-red pen, except for the suggestive, white, dripping star on the tip of the cap,

like this one.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/rhrpen/Freudspen1a_zps6be88aef.jpg, color room
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/rhrpen/Freudspen2a_zpsb7a27879.jpg, color detail

       “It may be true that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a pen is just a pen, but in some cases, at least, it seems justified to make the comparison between a pen and a phallus. When it comes to pens, and size, and wish fulfillment, and pen envy, and just how well-endowed we prefer our pens to be, it seems that we can live out our personal fantasies. Well, Papa Freud liked his pens big and red. So do most serious, big-time pen collectors. It’s easy to have a great collection of pens. You don’t need to know a lot. All you need is a lot of money. A lot of cents, but no sense.
       “Now, I don’t know whether the pen in the book and the pen on display in the show are the same pen. To find out for sure, we’ll have to await the reports of some of the Zoss List irregulars from the DC area who have attended the show, even though we can only participate in this great pen experience vicariously.”
        Bruce Herbitter wrote, “Wow, talk about Freudian! Or is that Jungian?”. And Jon Rosenbaum wrote, “While I really don’t care about the size or even the make of Freud’s pen, your post was most amusing! As they say, ‘Keep it up’”.
        Now, what would Papa Freud the pen collector have made of all this? He would have had a field day with it, especially with a red hard rubber safety pen in the #20 size with its propel-repel nib! Try pulling back the foreskin–I mean, screwing the pen out–I mean, propelling the nib. A nib is sort of shaped like a little helmet, isn’t it? It’s in the furbelow, down in the fen. “Alright, enough”, I can hear you say, “sometimes a pen is just a pen”. Just don’t forget to put a space between those two red words.*
        The pen should be back on display in the consultation room in the Freud Museum in London, so maybe somebody could check it out for for the rest of us.

* Footnote, Apr 7, 2014.
        Concerning not forgetting to put a space between those two red words, I discovered that
little bit of advice in 1993 when I was writing a brief, literary history of the fountain pen through
a survey of the literature on its origins and evolution. It turned out to be 20 pages long, single spaced. Well, if you write something about fountain pens, you will inevitably use the words “pen” and “is” together in the same sentence, you know, “the pen is this”, and “the pen is that”, that sort of thing. But when I performed a spellcheck on the text, low and behold, I found the word “penis” in my text. And I thought to myself, “Where the hell did that come from? I didn’t use that word”. So I reread the surrounding text to get a better sense of the context, and then it donned on me.
I forgot to put a space between those two red words.

Addendum, Aug 7, 2015.
        When I wrote the above post, I had not seen the pen in the exhibit, and I did not have access to original, detailed, digital photos, but since then, some new information has turned up online.
        It always troubled me that the pen in this color photo, and this detail, didn’t look decisively orange-red. It looked more like a red and black mottled, or red ripple hard rubber pen. But then this other color photo of what purports to be Freud’s fountain pen shows up, well, at least what purports to be one of Freud’s pens, yet another one. It looks like a Waterman’s #7 red ripple pen with a red nib, by the looks of the color band. So maybe this pen is the same as the one in the above color photo and detail, and the same as the muddled red pen on the desk in this photo.
        This doesn’t invalidate the identity of the pen in this other black & white photo of Freud’s desk in Vienna. It’s still a large Montblanc Safety pen with a big, dripping, white splat on the cap, but now I have to admit that it looks much more like a conservative black hard rubber pen.
        It pains me to have to take back some of what I wrote before, because what I said was funny. But now I have to revise it to say, “Papa Freud liked his pens big and black”, which is also funny, but in a different way.

http://www.culture24.org.uk/se000274
http://ds-lands.com/places/freud-museum.html, image 12
http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/still/a-dangerous-method-05.jpg
http://hirespace.com/Spaces/1374/Freud-Museum-London/Freud-Museum/Events
http://az413805.vo.msecnd.net/spaces/oc-rxl/1374/Freud%20Museum-%20Conferences%20(20).JPG
http://www.artabase.net/exhibition/165-sigmund-freuds-collection !
https://d15mj6e6qmt1na.cloudfront.net/files/images/0062/3683/Freud_s_Desk.jpg !!!!
http://capitulodoisdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sigmund-freud.jpg !
http://moniquespassions.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/29773_120851607952676_100000835120886_108292_560207_n.jpg !
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/sigmund-freuds-writing-desk-everett.jpg !
https://audioboo.fm/boos/175461-freud-museum-maresfield-gardens-london-nw3-the-study-right-hand-drawer-of-sigmund-freud-s-desk-16th-june-2009
http://www.freud.org.uk/events/74254/freuds-collection-passion-loss-and-recovery/
http://www.freud.org.uk/photo-library/detail/40060/
http://www.freud.org.uk/photo-library/detail/40073/

Addendum, Dec 22, 2023.
   Just found these in the artifacts housed at the Freud Museum in London, his Mont Blanc Safety fountain pen, Ref. No. 4740, and it turns out that it’s not red, it’s black, and his desktop pen rest, the alabaster vase, Ref. No. 3145.

https://www.freud.org.uk/collections/objects/4740/
https://www.freud.org.uk/collections/objects/3145/

George Kovalenko.

.

March 30, 2014

The Mechanical Pencil Decade

, or Charles Keeran and the Mechanical Pencil War, 1912-22.

       Reading through The American Stationer and other stationery magazines from the early 1910s to the 1920s is almost like a short course in the history of the development of the modern mechanical pencil. It was the mechanical pencil decade–the decade of the invention of the modern concept of the mechanical pencil. But big profits were also at stake, and underhanded dealings were the order of the day, so it was also an industrial manufacturing war. In the same way that 1875-85 was a seminal decade for the fountain pen, 1912-22 was a seminal decade for the mechanical pencil. There were mechanical pencils before that decade, just as there were fountain pens before 1875, but they didn’t look like what we expected them to look like. Charles R. Keeran was the one who initiated the transformation of the pencil. When he came along with his “Eversharp”, everyone else just latched on to his idea. The standardization and finalization of the modern look was all part of that decade.
       Before then, most mechanical pencils were called pencil cases, or ever-pointed pencils, or automatic pencils, or magazine pencils, or magic pencils, or sliding pencils, or telescopic pencils, or clutch pencils, or lead and crayon holders. Charles Livermore, in his patent no. 246,961 in 1881, was the first to call his pencil an “Automatic Pencil”, but then the Eagle Pencil Co. trademarked the word “Automatic” in 1882, TM 9,102, and turned it into a proprietary model name, and spoiled it for everyone else, and effectively killed the name. Livermore also called his pencil a “Stylographic Lead Pencil”, as in the ad on Dec 28, 1882, p.1002.
       The term “mechanical pencil”, however, made its first appearance in the title of US trademark 3,168 in 1875 in the form “Mechanical Lead-Pencil”, which is not quite there, yet, but almost, and it didn’t appear again in that form until US patents 574,359 and 574,360 in 1896. Its next appearance is in the specifications for patent 583,754 in 1897, where it states, “My invention relates to ‘mechanical pencils’, so called”, which implies that the term was beginning to be popularized. Then patent 590,598 in 1897 uses the related title “Mechanical Eraser”, and patent 592,161 also in 1897 again uses the title “Mechanical Lead-Pencil”. The next use didn’t occur until the title of US patent 928,733 in 1909, where it is finally shortened to just “Mechanical Pencil”, but the decade from 1912 to 1922 was the time when the term “mechanical pencil” finally caught on and was eventually and universally adopted. It was about time, too, after such a long gestation.
       Here are some ads and articles in Am. Stat. from that mechanical-pencil decade. You can see them all in the Hathi Trust Digital Library links. The period before 1912 is predominated by the pencil advertisements for the often ugly, ungainly, inelegant “Koh-I-Noor” mechanical pencils from L. & C. Hardtmuth. In spite of what I think of them, their ad on Apr 15, 1911, p.15, uses the ad line “The Gem Of Pencildom”. Another brand that appears in ads in that early period with equally ugly pencils is Eagle with its “Simplex” in the ad on July 13, 1912, p.10, the “Trumpet” in the ad on Nov 16, 1912, p.38, and the “Borneo” in the ad on Nov 30, 1912 p.26. But one pencil that stands out in that early period is the Aikin, Lambert Co. “Clutch Point” pencil, as in the ads and articles on Mar 16, 1912, p.14; Sept 7, 1912, p.18; Nov 2, 1912, p.31; June 7, 1913, p.24; Aug 23, 1913, p.2; Nov 1, 1913, p.2; and Oct 9, 1915, p.35. The shape of the barrel of the Aikin Lambert pencil almost seems to prefigure the styling of the George W. Heath & Co. mechanical pencils, and the early Keeran “Ever-Sharps” made for Keeran by Heath. The design of the distinctive crowns of all three pencils, however, not only resembles but derives from the classic, flared crowns of the pencil cases going back as far as the 1830s in the US patents. The flared crowns are part of a long-standing tradition, and are often found with a jewel, or a wax seal at the top. Here are some early pencil cases with the same flared crowns, Ex. 1, Ex. 2, Ex. 3, Ex. 4. Even Sampson Mordan’s UK patent from 1822 shows a flared crown, or knurled knob for propelling the lead, Ex. 5. In fact, he may have been the originator of the idea. The name “Clutch Pencil” was also used by O’Neill & Co., later Hutcheon Bros., for their “Hutch Clutch” pencil, Nov 15, 1913, p.28 and Apr 17, 1915, p.30, and by Beegee Co. for their “Busy Man’s” clutch pencil, Mar 14, 1914, p.23, and their “Beegee” clutch pencil, Mar 21, 1914, p.19, and by the Clutch Pencil Co., “the originator of the clutch pencil, established 1897”, Apr 18, 1914, p.65. Even Hoge, June 20, 1914, p.32, and Eagle, May 22, 1915, p.10, and Dixon, Apr 1, 1916, p.16, and Salz, Apr 15, 1916, p.30, had clutch pencils.
       Keeran & Co. makes its first appearance in Am. Stat. on Oct 31, 1914, p.8, in a brief mention in a list of travelers in Philadelphia. The Eberhard Faber “Magazine Pencil” is advertized as “A Barrel of Leads”, Apr 17, 1915, p.38. The Triangle Reflex Pencil Co. ads start on July 3, 1915, p.2, and p.32, “A Revelation in Lead Pencils”. Keeran’s “Eversharp” name first shows up in an article on Sept 18, 1915, p.30, and the first Eversharp Pencil Co. ads with a full pencil illustrated appear on Mar 3, 1917, p.17, and Apr 28, 1917, p.37. By the time of the article on June 9, 1917, p.36, the Wahl Co. was well on its way to wresting control of the Eversharp pencil from Keeran. And Salz had their look-alike “Sta-Sharp” pencils, May 17, 1919, p.29, and “Salrite”, Oct 30, 1920, p.24, and Nov 5, 1921, p.18. And by Feb 19, 1921, p.25, Conklin had their “Automatic Pencil”, by June 18, 1921, p.27, Hoge had their “Pal” pencil, by Aug 13, 1921, p.40, Mabie Todd had their “Fyne Poynt” pencil, by Nov 19, 1921, p.26, Parker had its “Lucky Lock” pencil, and Waterman’s had their hard rubber pencil by Nov 26, 1921, p.26. Venus went back to using an ancient name with their “Everpointed Pencil” of Mar 22, 1919, p.23, and Oct 25, 1919, p.72, but soon after, on Dec 3, 1921, p. 28, and Dec 10, 1921, p.17, they came up with a quaint term used by them exclusively, the term “Metal Pencils”, and starting with an ad on Mar 25, 1922, p.27, they started using both the old and new terms in the same ad, “Everpointed” and “Mechanical Pencils”, and in the ad on July 1, 1922, p.21, they used both “Metal Pencils” and “Mechanical Pencils”. And on Aug 12, 1922, p.28, an article about the news from the Chicago stationers stated that, “There seems to be an awakening competition in the refillable lead pencils throughout the city”. None of this came simply out of the blue. It all came out of the reaction to Keeran’s “Ever-Sharp” and as a consequence of the mechanical pencil decade.

Charles R. Keeran* was a central figure in the development of the modern mechanical pencil, but he was by no means the only figure involved. Around 1912-13, Keeran took an interest in mechanical pencils. He bought a mechanical pencil while traveling, and took it apart, and he figured that he could design a better one. Keeran invented his “Ever-Sharp” pencil and coined the “Ever-Sharp” name in 1913. In his famous letter, he also claimed that he was the one who chose the standard size of mechanical pencil lead, 0.047" in diameter, but that’s probably a typo for 0.046", since that is the actual size of his standard lead.** But that doesn’t mean that the 0.046" size didn’t exist before, just that he chose it as his standard size. There are many pencil cases and mechanical pencils from the 1800s that take leads that are 1.1 to 1.2 mm, which is just about 0.046". But because of the success of his Eversharp pencil, that size became the standard for all mechanical pencils at the time, and the name “Eversharp” became the generic name for all mechanical pencils. He started Keeran & Co., also called Keeran Products Co., in Bloomington, Ill., in 1913, and applied for a patent for his pencil in October 1913. He briefly moved to New York to learn the pencil business, and his first Ever-Sharps were made, and probably designed, for him in December 1913 by George W. Heath & Co. using the patented Heath clip. David Nishimura makes a strong case in his blog article, “Who Designed the Eversharp Pencil?”, for Heath as the designer responsible for the look of Keeran’s first Ever-Sharp mechanical pencils.
Keeran moved back to Bloomington, and organized Keeran & Co. in early 1914, and continued to develop the business and to perfect the pencil with further patents in October 1914. He exhibited his pencil at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, and moved the business to Chicago in late Summer 1915. The first ad for his pencil was published in September 1915, and he made a fateful business alliance with John C. Wahl and Charles S. Roberts of the Wahl Adding Machine Co. He contracted them to manufacture his pencils in October 1915, and he filed a patent for the trowel clip, in April 1916. The venture-capitalist Wahl company wrested control of his company from him when he unwisely sold a majority holding of the stock in his company to them at the end of 1916. He was still a large stockholder in Eversharp, but he had no way of stopping the Wahl Adding Machine Co. when they decided to merge with and absorb the Eversharp Pencil Co. by swapping Wahl stock for Eversharp stock. After the stock trading was over, he ended up owning four-tenths of one percent of the stock in the new company. In spite of that, Keeran remained with the company, and under his encouragement they bought the Boston Safety Fountain Pen Co. in January 1917. Even though he held the pen and pencil patents for Keeran Products Co., Eversharp Pencil Co., and later the Wahl Co., he was eventually forced out of this company. This happened because, as he said, he committed the crime of “lese majesty”, or high treason, by asking about his decreased investments in the company in August 1917. He wasn’t discharged or fired, probably because of the patents he controlled, but the owners of the Wahl Co. humiliated him and forced him to resign from the board of directors and to sell out to the company on Dec 20, 1917. It’s almost as if Waterman’s company were successfully stolen away from him by Shipman. He fought two court cases with the Wahl Co. for many years afterwards, even though he still held one of the patents for the Wahl fountain pen lever. He started the Autopoint Pencil Co., held patents for the Autopoint pencil, and coined the “Autopoint” name in 1918, and trademarked the name in 1919. He made a new business alliance with Realite Pencil Co., owned by John Lynn, Michael Kaufmann, and Frank Deli, in 1921. They were pioneering the use of bakelite plastics in the manufacture of mechanical pencils. The company went through several incarnations until 1924, until it became the Autopoint Co. in 1924-25. The Bakelite Corp. became the controlling owner of Autopoint when some of the partners sold out, but Keeran was still associated with Autopoint for years. He made a hasty settlement with Wahl, and then was reduced to sending his letter to the Wahl company pleading for fairness. Such was the fate of this pioneering giant of mechanical pencil development. But he went on to receive other patents throughout the 1920s and up till the end of the 1930s. And he had the last laugh because his six-page letter survived and told the true story of his pencil, and his name “Eversharp” became synonymous with the word “mechanical pencil”.

George Kovalenko.

.

* A lot of the details of Keeran’s story are known only because of the survival of a 1928 letter written by him to a board member of the Wahl Co. It was first published on Robert L. Bolin’s website, “The Mechanical Pencil Industry in Chicago”,
http://www.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/index.htm
on the “Charles Keeran Page”.
http://unllib.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/keeran/index.htm
And here are the links to the 6-page Keeran letter.
http://unllib.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/keeran/1928pg1.gif
http://unllib.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/keeran/1928pg2.gif
http://unllib.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/keeran/1928pg3.gif
http://unllib.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/keeran/1928pg4.gif
http://unllib.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/keeran/1928pg5.gif
http://unllib.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/keeran/1928pg6.gif

** I really think that the 0.047" in Keeran’s letter is literally a typo, since it appears in a typed letter, and that’s the etymological source of that word. I really think that Keeran intended to type 0.046", but his attention and his finger slipped. The number “7” is conveniently right next to the number “6” on a typewriter keyboard, and it would be so easy to mistype the number and then not catch it in proofreading. Keeran probably didn’t proofread the letter at all. I really don’t think that Keeran intended to type 0.047". If only Keeran had mentioned the lead size twice, or more times within that letter to either confirm, or deny his intention to type 0.047", and not 0.046". Until then, it’s a true hapax legomenon. It’s literally “said once”.

March 28, 2014

Generally Accepted Research Rules

[Posted on FPN on Aug 10, 2010, and on L&P on Aug 13, 2010.]
Perhaps these rules are a bit too rigorous and demanding, but it would be a small victory if people would follow at least some of the rules. Do my senses deceive me, or are some posters on message boards following some of the generally accepted research rules? For instance, some are actually signing their real names, and staying civil, and being generous with citing their sources, and daring to take pen research seriously. It’s a small victory for all of us.

1. Do no harm. Do not disseminate any disinformation. Do not destroy, suppress, withhold, or conceal any information that you may discover. Do not discourage any avenues of possible research.

2. Stay civil. This is the first and foremost rule for online research. No flaming, or spamming, at all. Do not downplay, disparage, or ridicule anyone else’s theories or proposals. Instead, try to prove them wrong.

3. Take ownership of everything you write. Sign everything you post or publish, and don’t expect everyone to know you by your username, or handle. There is no place in research for anonymity.

4. Anything reasonable should be allowed to be raised and given a chance, even though it is raised anonymously, and even though it might later be discounted, but there must be at least some initial basis in fact.

5. Be clear in what you write. Make sure you distinguish between what is established fact and what is just conjecture, or opinion, or guesses.

6. Cite your sources. Whenever possible try to avoid leaving dangling attributions such as “I seem to remember”, or “I read somewhere that”. Make all references explicit and definite.

7. Limit your quotations of others’ messages to the pertinent portion to which you are responding, and never include quotations of quotations unless you are responding to all of them specifically.

8. Use standard English, but if you can’t, and you have some new pen knowledge to contribute, others will still want to read it. Use a spell checker, and avoid using sentence fragments.

9. Resist using emoticons and other disfiguring, idiosyncratic punctuation marks, or at least use them sparingly, and only on the rarest occasions. They distract the reader from the text.

10. Dare to take pen research seriously. If you don’t, no one else will, and pen research will languish. Do it so well they can’t ignore it.

George Kovalenko.

.

Addendum, Jan 6, 2018.
      Roger Wooten started Topic 278 on L&P in the “Work Ethics” forum, “Repair and Restoration Ethics, What constitutes going too far?”, where he proposed a new set of rules that he christened “GARM, Generally Accepted Restoration Methods”, but saying further “you can feel free to name it anything you like”. On Jan 5, 2018, Roger sent me this note, “I’m a CPA, and [the name] was in line with the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, so that’s where it came from”. In a later topic in the “Work Ethics” forum on L&P, Topic 327, Rob started a thread titled “Collector Code, code of ethics for pen collectors, includes GARM disclaimer”, and ran with the ball. I took it into another direction in a thread titled “GARR, Generally Accepted Research Rules”, Topic 1980.

Addendum, July 1, 1996, Feb 16, 2018.
The Pensmith’s Screed.
        I believe that the fountain pen is the most practical writing instrument ever developed, but that using pens is not the only reason for collecting them.
      I believe that there are more reasons for collecting pens than just appreciating them because they are good examples of “portable wealth”, and because they look so good.
        I believe that collecting pens is not only about using and appreciating pens, and that studying and preserving them are equally important aspects of collecting pens.
      I believe that not all fountain pens were meant to be used, and that some were meant to be preserved unused rather than be allowed to be used until they are all used up.
        I believe that it is a fountain pen collector’s responsibility, in the name of posterity, to know the history of a pen and to preserve rare examples in unused, or in no-longer-used condition.
      A[ll women and children and ]men.

March 27, 2014

Essential Pen Research Tools

[Posted on L&P on Aug 22, 2012.]
These are the essential research tools that you’ll need in order to do pen history.

–Bibliography of pen books & articles, and a pen-book library to go with it.

–Hardcopy and digital lists of f-pen patents, 1799-1911, and 1911-57.

–List of patentees, alphabetically by surname, by Michael Kidd.

–USPTO, Google Patents, EPO, and Trade.mar.cx online.

–Alphabetical list of Penmakers and pen companies.

–The American Stationer, hardcopy and digital.

–An illustrated list of pen terms, by anyone.

–Court cases, by Antonios Zavaliangos.

–Court cases on LexisNexis.com.

–Censuses on Ancestry.com.

–A database of pen pics.

–Archived pen boards.

 George Kovalenko.  

.

P.S.
Also see “GARR”, and all the “Vintage Links” in the sidebar at the right.

March 22, 2014

The American Stationer

You can’t download the whole volumes unless you have a password from one of the participating libraries, but you can link directly to individual pages on Hathi. Alternatively, you can download individual pages to save images to create your own links. And for those of you in the US, there are also the volumes from Google Books in David Nishimura’s list, which are viewable only in the US.

Ad in Am. Stat., Oct 3, 1878, p.24.

Addendum, Dec 14, 2014, Nov 9, 2015, and Aug 3, 2016.
I have added the Hathi issues from 1923-1927. Even though the links for these later volumes are supplied by Hathi, they are not available online. If you click on these links, you get the message, “This item is not available online (Limited search only) due to copyright restrictions”, and if you perform a word search, say for the word “Duofold”, you get the message, “Full view is not available for this item due to copyright © restrictions”. But maybe someday, soon . . .

Addendum, Nov 24, 2018.
Vols. 2 & 3 are now also in both the Hathi Trust and the Internet Archive.

Addendum, May 31, 2019.
Vols. 92 & 93 from 1923 have now been released by the Hathi Trust.

Addendum, Jan 5, 2021.
Vols. 94 & 95 from 1924 were released last year, and vol. 97 from 1925, but not vol. 96, has just been released by Hathi Trust. It seems that 96 still hasn’t been digitized and added to the index list, and it looks like they are going to add two more volumes at the beginning of every year when they enter into the public domain, according to US copyright and intellectual property rights laws.

Addendum, Apr 26, 2022.
Vols. 98 & 99 from 1926, but not vol. 96, have just been released by Hathi Trust. It seems that vol. 96 still hasn’t been digitized and added to the index list, and it looks like they are going to add new volumes at the beginning of every year when they enter into the public domain, according to US copyright and intellectual property laws.

George Kovalenko. 

.

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