Laughlin is not one of the better-known American pen manufacturers, though they came up with some unusual and innovative designs -- not so much in the way of styling so much as gadgeteering.
When I saw this Laughlin at a show earlier in the year, it caught my eye as a somewhat oddly proportioned screw-cap dropper-filler. And then I noticed that the cap was two-piece.
After unscrewing the top and playing with it a bit, I discovered that there was a spring-loaded inner cap inside. You can see how it all goes together in the picture below. The cap would not have been intended to be taken apart by the user, at least not on a regular basis. I bet a lot of curious users ended up dropping and losing the little coil spring, though.
"A lot" would have been relative to the number of total owners, though, which likely wasn't that many. This is the only example of such a cap that I've seen, and surely it met with little commercial success. It offers no better sealing than a conventional fixed inner cap, and where a fixed inner cap gives a nice crisp feel to the closure when the cap is screwed all the way down, the spring cap makes the last half-turn or so decidedly mushy and draggy.
There is no patent imprint on the pen. A bit of searching, however, uncovered US1075631, awarded to Harry B. Dods in 1913 and assigned to Diamond Point. How it ended up used on a Laughlin, who knows?
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