The introduction of Waterman's "Spoon Feed"

Waterman's original feed was narrow, just wide enough to carry the grooved ink channel. It was protected by US patent 293545, issued on February 12, 1884 with a term of 17 years and thus due to expire on February 12, 1901. So it made sense that the successor design, the wider Spoon Feed, would have been introduced in 1901 -- as per the conventional wisdom -- even though it had already been patented a few years earlier (US625722, filed August 24, 1898, issued May 23, 1899). But pinning down an exact date wasn't easy. Waterman often introduced new models or features well before advertising them, and the application for the Spoon Feed trademark (37530, filed April 27, 1901, registered December 31, 1901) claimed use since August 1, 1900. And yet a Google Books search for "Waterman" and "spoon feed" from 1899-1900 yields no hits at all, while an ad in Scribner's Magazine Advertiser, vol. 29, 1901, p. 59, suggests an introduction at the very beginning of 1901:

"Most bookkeepers and stenographers have used Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pens for years. After January 1st, 1901, you will not be up-to-date without one, since our new Spoon Feed brings them to absolute perfection for professional writers."

Even this mention is less than authoritative, though, inasmuch as it appears in a spring advertising supplement that is undated, but full of ads for summer cruises and the like, and bound messily with tables of contents for issues up to July 1901. Another early mention is found in a different spring advertising supplement, this one in McClure's (vol. 16, no. 6, p. 109):

"Painting the Lily and improving the Waterman Feed seem equally absurd. Yet Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pen is now furnished with a new Spoon Feed which is better than the old."

This also can only be dated indirectly, including as it does an ad on p. 20 for the Pan-American Exhibition, which ran from May to November of 1901. Otherwise, the only securely datable ads that I was ever able to find mentioned the Spoon Feed date no earlier than May (Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, vol. 52, May 1901).

The material cited so far was assembled some time ago. But now with the recent digitization of the key issues of The American Stationer spanning the years 1900 to 1901, the longstanding question of when and how Waterman introduced its "Spoon Feed" can finally be answered. As it turns out, an unexpected factor in the rollout appears to have been the rivalry with Parker, which had taken its most recent ugly turn with litigation arising from Waterman's attempt to enforce its limited and rather questionable patent on a slip-cap (US604690). That Waterman was engaging in serious lawfare is in no doubt, with the extent nicely illustrated by this entry (August 10, 1901, p. 23 -- oh, to have access to those twelve volumes now!):

At the Philadelphia Export Exhibition in fall of 1899, Waterman had served papers on a Parker exhibitor for a claim of patent infringement. The wrangling lasted until March 1901: Parker's lawyers objected and the service was ruled invalid; Waterman appealed, but lost again (American Stationer, Oct 13, 1900, p. 34; Mar 30, 1901, p. 11). Meanwhile, Parker struck back with ads in July 1900 that openly taunted Waterman over their respective cap patent claims (July 7, 1900, p. 16; also July 14, p. 16):

The taunting took on a new twist in the American Stationer of January 12, 1901, with a series of Parker ads that touted the Jointless as not being "covered with EXPIRED patents" (p. 7; also January 19, 26, Feb 2, all p. 7; the January 5 ad lacks the dig).

The week after the last of the above ads ran, the gloves came off. What had been alluded to was now spelled out in black and white. It was a barefaced attack, without even the pretense of being part of advertising Parker's own products.

These ads ran for three weeks, starting February 9, in Parker's usual spot on p. 7. Waterman's response was immediate, with their front cover ad in the next issue (February 16) formally announcing the Spoon Feed, noting that "Most of our customers have seen this successful invention, since it has already been offered in our special bookkeepers' and stenographers' pens".

Further mention of the new feed appeared inside the same issue (p. 23), as part of a report on a recent Waterman's publicity coup in which each guest at a dinner of the Stationers' Board of Trade was given a gold-mounted fountain pen (that is, with gold filled trim bands).

Reading between the lines, it seems as if the transition from the old feed to the new feed was intended to be gradual, but the company ended up scrambling to speed up the changeover. And though the professed reason was market demand, the threat of Parker trumpeting the expiry of the patent and the implicit obsolescence of the old feed to the general public (the salvos above were in a trade journal) surely weighed heavily in Waterman's decision to kill off the old feed sooner rather than later. This is consistent with the account below -- all mention of patent status discreetly omitted -- published once the dust had settled, in the American Stationer of August 17, 1901, p. 62:

The key passages include: "Early in the spring of the present year [1901] they started to introduce their new spoon feed", "the company supposed it would be nearly a year before a complete change in their output would be necessary", "in two months they were almost swamped", and "now . . . the plant has been entirely changed over".

It would seem then that the August 1, 1900 "first use" date for "Spoon Feed" in Waterman's trademark application would represent the beginning of market testing, which according to the earliest ads began with pens for bookkeepers and stenographers -- long and slender models, presumably. The switchover for other models would have been underway by early 1901, but drastically accelerated in mid-February, old feed production being phased out over the next few months, ending by mid-August at the very latest.

Chapmans vs Waterman: Safety pen patents

One of the disputes brought out in the Chapmans vs Waterman case (background here) was over claimed infringements by Waterman of safety pen patents held by A. A. Waterman/Modern Pen. The main discussion appears in a letter from Waterman dated May 21, 1908, addressed to Alexander S. Bacon, Modern Pen's lawyer, and entered into evidence as Plaintiff's Exhibit 25 (pp. 496ff). The letter recounts Waterman's negotiations to purchase Modern Pen, including its patents (though in the trial, the focus seems to have been put on Waterman's attempts from 1907-08 to buy the A. A. Waterman trade name; p. 122-24). According to the Waterman letter, the sale of Modern was a done deal, awaiting only "formal corporate authorization". Counting on this pending acquisition of the Modern patents, Waterman "began the manufacture of a safety fountain pen which is the one of which we assume you complain." When this manufacture began is a bit unclear. Bacon had sent letters on April 29 and May 19, 1908 protesting the infringement, but how long did it take for Modern to learn of the new safeties and to respond? The Waterman letter states that the expected sale of Modern was still pending when Bacon's letter of April 29 was received, but the deal afterwards fell through. The letter then avows (p. 497):

As soon as we learned that these negotiations of sale had been broken off, we forthwith entirely discontinued the manufacture and sale of the safety fountain pen as then constructed and of which we assume you complain. Of the safety fountain pens of which we assume you complain only a few have been sold, probably less than a dozen.

Considering the letter's purpose, this improbably low number should be taken with a grain of salt. Admitting no fault, the letter goes on in good legal style to name and deny the validity of the patents allegedly infringed (523234 Peck and O'Meara, July 17, 1894; 551895 Horton and Peck, December 25, 1895; 700909 Frazer, May 27, 1902), and to state that Waterman's abandonment of this original safety design was "merely to avoid litigation and the trouble and expense incident thereto." The letter then concludes:

We are now using for our safety fountain pen a construction or structure which our predecessors in business used more than twenty years ago, and which has been commonly and continuously used for pencils and fountain pens since 1852, and of which we assume you claim no monopoly, If you desire, we would be pleased to submit to you a sample of the safety fountain pen as we are now making and selling the same. We wish to repeat that we have entirely discontinued making and selling fountain pens of the structure of which we assume you complain, and that we do this merely to avoid litigation and not because we recognize the validity of the patents you claim to be infringed, or that the pen as made by us did actually infringe any of these patents.

The generally accepted chronology for Waterman safeties posits that the earliest examples were those in which the nib turned as it extended and retracted, the tracks cut into the interior of the barrel being helical, rather than straight. Later safeties used a straight track and a helically-slotted driving tube (for illustrations, see our Waterman Safeties Pen Profile). The arrangement of the earlier safeties would have been to get around the Peck and O'Meara patent. The Waterman letter adds another twist to the story, so to speak. The helical-track safeties were not Waterman's first, after all. For while the standard straight-track pens did follow the helical-track pens, it seems they also -- albeit briefly -- preceded them.

If that "construction or structure which our predecessors in business used more than twenty years ago, and which has been commonly and continuously used for pencils and fountain pens since 1852" is to be identified with the straight-track safeties, how is that particular passage to be read? The reference to "our predecessors in business" is particularly opaque, implying as it does that Waterman itself used this mechanism in its earlier days -- and inasmuch as Waterman evidently didn't, must be interpreted as a deliberately misleading way of saying that other, earlier, and unrelated companies did. The reference to 1852 appears to invoke the mechanism described in John Mabie's US patent 11762, application date unknown, but issued in 1854. Others had long used a basic retracting or propelling mechanism consisting of a carrier riding in a longitudinally-slotted tube, riding in turn inside a helically-slotted tube, the carrier having a pin engaging both slots, by which the carrier was driven when one tube was twisted and the other held fixed. Mabie's patent added two improvements: a pin that went all the way through, engaging the outer tube's track on both sides; and helical slots in both tubes, cut in opposite directions. The Waterman letter undoubtedly refers to the first improvement, applied to the older form of retracting mechanism, rather than to the second, which is unknown in Waterman safeties of any era. Waterman's claim that this mechanism had been in use for decades for fountain pens appears to be a complete fabrication.

The limitations of advertisements as evidence are once again highlighted here. Previously, our earliest notice of Waterman safety production came in advertisements and trade journal mentions at the end of July 1908. We now know that Waterman began making safeties no later than April, and had switched to a non-infringing design in May.

ADDENDUM: In case you were wondering how A. A. Waterman/Modern Pen ended up with all the key retracting-nib safety pen patents, see Geyer's Stationer, vol. 31, Apr 4, 1901, p. 35, which reports on Frazer & Geyer's purchase of the Horton Pen Company's plant, machinery, and patents.

UPDATE: More details about the correspondence between Modern's counsel, Alexander Bacon, and Waterman is to be found here. There is a slight inconsistency in that the first letter from Bacon is there dated April 20 rather than April 29. What is more significant is that the contents of this letter and Bacon's followup letter of May 19 are reproduced, both noting advertisements for Waterman's safety in Cosmopolitan. Searching online copies from March to May 1908 has so far been unsuccessful, as available versions all seem to lack all or part of their advertising sections.

Chapmans vs Waterman: A pen history trove

Trial transcripts offer some of the richest repositories of behind-the-scenes historical information about the pen industry. The dispute itself is often of secondary interest, in comparison to what gets brought out in the testimony. This is very much the case with a volume I recently discovered on Google Books, which records the appeal by Isaac E. and William L. Chapman against the L. E. Waterman Company, heard in 1915 in the New York State Supreme Court's Appellate Division. This was the penultimate action in the long-running legal battle between Waterman and A. A. Waterman that was finally settled once and for all in 1917 -- a battle already treated at great length by George Kovalenko, to whom I will leave the task of analyzing the new material and incorporating it into the Waterman vs Waterman story.

What I intend to do instead, is to highlight some of the tangential information brought out in the testimony. This will take the form of multiple posts, so as to maintain a degree of organization by topic. Much of the new information has to do with Waterman, but covering everything from specific designs and models to manufacturing techniques to operational procedures in the repair departments -- plus the odd intriguing anecdote. The post topics are: Ferris' testimony; Safety pen patents; Notable pens; Chasing machines; and Miscellaneous.

Customized pens and manufacturer lawsuits

If you buy a car and customize it, that's OK. If you buy a name-brand shirt and customize it with transfers or embroidery, that's OK, too. It's also OK to resell what you've customized -- though of course it would be wrong if you misrepresented what you added to the product as being anything but your own work.

Some manufacturers, however, don't see it that way. They don't want anyone altering their products, and are willing to use the threat of ruination through litigation to get their way -- right or wrong.

That, at least, was the story making the rounds at the recent Columbus pen show, with continuing discussion since online. Montblanc has apparently filed a lawsuit against Roger Cromwell, a California pen seller and repairman, over his online listing of a current-production Montblanc pen customized in South America with a fancy metal overlay. I don't know all the details, but it seems to me that if the online description failed to give sufficient emphasis to the fact that the decoration of the pen was neither by Montblanc nor Montblanc-authorized, a simple warning letter would have sufficed. It's also strange that I've heard nothing of any legal action being pursued against the company actually doing the customization (their identity has always been quite public) or against anyone else selling their pens. As is, it looks very much like a little guy is being made an example of -- not the best thing for Montblanc's corporate image.

UPDATE: Much more detail in the discussion over at Fountain Pen Network; the discussion actually began first at Pentrace, but may no longer be accessible there due to the archive-less nature of the site.

Here's a press release from 2005 about the dismissal of a suit brought in 2001 by Montblanc against Aurora over alleged trademark infringement, unfair competition, and dilution claims regarding Aurora's use of caps with three bands -- a trademark claimed by Montblanc, but with a long, long history of prior use by other penmakers around the world.

UPDATE: The lawsuit has been settled; the judgment document can be seen here. From what I hear, Montblanc was not happy with all the bad publicity coming out of its hardball tactics in this case. The defendant is still out substantial legal costs, but reports are that the damages to be paid to settle will be token.