The elusive Ten-Year Pen

The Congregationalist, 8 Sep 1906, p. 321

In was in the first decade of the 20th century that the self-filling fountain pen came into its own. Scores of ingenious filling mechanisms were patented, many even making it into production -- though often not for long. One design that proved lasting was the sleeve or thumb-filler, in which a manually-depressed pressure bar was by various means made either accessible for filling or safely concealed for use.

One of the earliest sleeve-filling fountain pens was the Ten Year Pen. In this variation the back half of the barrel was the sleeve, sliding over a metal sac housing with a cutout for access to the pressure bar. The first advertisements appear in the last quarter of 1906. Most ran in religious periodicals such as The Congregationalist and Christian World, The Christian Advocate and Journal, The Church School Adjuster, and the Baptist Standard, but ads also are found in publications such as The Mercantile Adjuster, The American Review of Reviews, and The Etude (for music teachers). In all these early ads the company is listed as The Ten Year Guarantee Pen Company of Ansonia, Connecticut. The earliest mention of the company I have found is in The Missionary Herald of July 1906, where it is listed as having given a donation of $15 in May of that year.

Expositor and Current Anecdotes, Dec 1907, p. 146

From the end of 1907 there is no more mention of The Ten Year Guarantee Pen Company or Ansonia. The pen is henceforth styled "The Ten-Year Pen", and shown with a cap imprint identifying George B. Graff of Boston as "Manager" (F. M. Barton in the ad above was the publisher of the magazine, who in an arrangement common in that era was also a sales agent for the items advertised there). 

The Ecclesiastical Review, vol. 39, 1908

The George B. Graff Company was an established Boston manufacturer of stationery supplies such as paper fasteners and clamps. Adding a fountain pen to their line would not have been such a stretch; the original Ten Year Guarantee Pens surely were made under contract -- the area of Connecticut comprising Ansonia and Seymour was home to Day Rubber and had been a center of contract manufacture of hard rubber pens and pen parts for decades -- so however the transfer was effected, it would not have involved the kind of capital required for actual factory ownership.

Over the next few years Ten-Year Pen ads continue to appear in various publications, though without the pronounced evangelical slant of the original company's promotional efforts. After the end of the decade these ads drop away, though Graff continues to be listed as the seller of the Ten-Year Pen in stationery trade directories such as Walden's and Geyer's up through 1912 at least.

Gregg Writer, Sep 1915, pp. vii 

Gregg Writer, Oct 1915, p. iv 

The ads above clarify the later history of the Ten-Year Pen: renamed "The Dependable", taken over by Hermann Frederic Post, and moved from Boston to Chicago. Post continued to advertise The Dependable as late as 1921, still touting a ten-year guarantee. The last mention I can find is in the May 1928 American Stationer "Buyers' Classified Directory" -- but that list is so extensive and each entry so perfunctory that it is likely that at least some defunct or moribund companies ended up being included.

Ten-Year Pens aren't often seen, even by those who have been hunting in the company's home territories for years. Most examples are plain black hard rubber, though gold filled bands were advertised as an option. Several overlay examples are known in both gold filled and silver, the filigree overlays undoubtedly sourced from Heath. The pen shown here belongs to Gabriel Galicia Goldsmith, who generously gave permission to use his photos for this post.

There has been some confusion about the parentage of the Ten-Year Pen. As long ago as the 1990s collector lore was associating the pen with William I. Ferris, unlikely as that would have been given Ferris's central position at Waterman. Whether such a connection was posited in print, I have not been able to determine (it is not mentioned in the big Fischler and Schneider volumes, nor in the Pen Fanciers' Magazine). How it came about is easy to see, though. The patent date that appears on the pens and in advertisements is September 19, 1905, which is the issue date of Ferris's first sleeve-filler patent, US799897. Yet if one examines that patent it is clearly not relevant: it is for a one-piece barrel with an aperture, covered by a rotating sleeve with a matching aperture -- a design never used for Waterman-branded pens, but produced as Remex and Aikin Lambert models. There were at least three other fountain pen patents issued on that same date, however, with Robert W. Gorham's patent US800129 clearly being the one referenced in the Ten-Year Pen imprint.

One of the claims of Gorham's patent is shown in the image above. The text explains, "It is also the purpose of my invention to make the plunger more efficient by having a lug thereon within the aperture" -- that is, a projection attached to the pressure bar, making it easier to press down all the way. And sure enough, this lug is visible in the early Ten-Pen ads (the image below is a detail from the 1906 ad at the very top of this post).

So who was Robert W. Gordon? And who was behind the original Ten Year Guarantee Pen Company?  If I have the right Robert W. Gordon, he died quite young, and though mechanically inclined is not listed as involved in pen manufacture in any of the records found to date. This would suggest that he sold his patent, with others yet to be identified having been the ones who actually brought the Ten-Year Pen to market. Then there is the question of the priority of the sleeve-fillers made by Standard & Vulcanite in Brooklyn under Hamilton's patent US781649, issued February 7, 1905. Were the claims in this patent too narrow, allowing closely similar designs such as the Ten-Year Pen to avoid infringement by changing minor details, such as using an unsprung pressure bar, or a sliding barrel without a catch? All these questions are going to take some more digging -- ample material for a followup post.