A notable early Waterman ad

The advertisement shown below was published in Our Society Journal, vol. 6, Apr 1886, p. 17 (Google Books, Hathitrust). The very early use of the globe as a logo is immediately striking, but no less significant is the mix of promises and testimonials below. While the testimonials are from prominent individuals whose names also figure in other Waterman promotional literature, the promises are from individuals or companies directly involved in Waterman manufacture.

This roster includes not only "The Ideal Pen Co., 155 Broadway, N. Y." and "L. E. Waterman, Manager", but also H. P. & E. Day, Rubber-Mfrs., Seymour, Ct. ("Holders of the Finest Hard Rubber") and Mr. Leroy W. Fairchild, Gold Pen Mfr., N. Y. ("Each Gold Pen of First Quality") -- clearly and unmistakably identifying Waterman's two most important original subcontractors.

Precious aluminum

From the A Little Knowledge department:

Many collectors and dealers are well aware that aluminum is a relatively new metal, and that when first produced, it was considered precious -- more precious, even, than gold. Many fewer, however, are clear on exactly when aluminum became cheap and plentiful -- leading to rather drastic misinterpretations of the original value and nature of early 20th-century aluminum objects.

A bit of digging turned up some good basic aluminum history (links here and here), which incidentally also provide a bit of background on why US usage is "aluminum" while most of the rest of the world prefers "aluminium".

Perhaps the most useful references I found, however, had to do with the famous aluminum capstone of the Washington Monument, in particular George J. Binczewski's "The Point of a Monument: A History of the Aluminum Cap of the Washington Monument", and especially the sidebar entitled "Aluminum's Status in the Mid-1880s". Also of interest is this article on the use of corundum crystals for the capstone, other forms of naturally-occurring aluminum being of insufficient purity.

One of the best short summaries comes from the USGS, in .pdf form; the key excerpt runs as follows:

As late as the early 1880’s, it was considered to be a semiprecious metal and was sold in troy-ounce quantities; the retail price of aluminum metal was reported to be higher than that of silver. A commercially viable large-scale production method had yet to be developed. Domestic production levels during this period were in the 1,000- to 3,000-troy-ounce range, and many uses were considered to be experimental (Mining Engineering, 1987).
In 1886, formal patent applications were filed for the electrolytic reduction process for aluminum. This process, which came to be known as the Hall-Heroult process, led to the mass commercial production of aluminum metal. As the process was developed and refined, production levels increased rapidly. By 1895, domestic production levels had reached 1 million pounds. As production levels continued to increase, domestic producers kept the price of aluminum low to encourage its use by consumers. In the early 1900’s, they held aluminum metal prices at a low steady level to compete against copper in the electrical industry (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1956, p. II.1-II.4).

Some further bits and pieces turned up along the way:
The widespread tale that Pliny describes something suspiciously aluminum-like in antiquity is a fraud: in the words of Laputan Logic,

. . . a carefully constructed myth that was promulgated by Napoleon's very own aluminium guy, Henri-Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville, the man founded the world's first commercial aluminium process with the generous support of the Emperor.

For more reliable aluminum history, I am in the process of getting my hands on a copy of the exhibition catalog, Aluminum by Design: Jewelry to Jets; a couple of the essays appear to be reprinted online here and here. [originally published July 22, 2006 at Cronaca.com -- some links now broken]

Waterman pens and dynamometers

Waterman collectors have long been aware of the Signagraph, a form of pantograph that allowed its operator to sign multiple documents (payroll checks, typically) at once. The Signagraph was not the only application in which Waterman pens were utilized for mechanical output, however, as we can read in the ad below.

Popular Mechanics, Aug 1911, p. 107

Railroad dynamometers were typically built into a special-purpose car, which is why we have not seen any turn up at a pen show, or on eBay for that matter. Waterman advertisements continued to make period mention of their pens' use in dynamometers for some years. The ad below ran in Scientific American, vol. 122 (May 1, 1920), p. 500, as well as Collier's, vol. 65 (May 22, 1920), p. 47 and others.

A fine silver filigree safety

For those who study and collect Waterman pens, Aikin Lambert products have a special appeal. Following Waterman's takeover, many Aikin models shared essential design elements with their Waterman counterparts. The differences, however, are often striking, with some Aikin pens resembling Waterman pens from an alternate universe.

The pen shown here is a fine (silver) example of this. It is in essence an unmarked Waterman 12½ VS safety, with an Aikin Lambert #2 nib and a narrow rectangular Aikin Lambert feed. The turning knob is not threaded, and the nib does not twist as it is extended and retracted, indicating a date no earlier than 1912. The overlay, however, is electroformed fine silver, in a filigree pattern familiar from earlier Waterman pens but no longer offered by c. 1908 -- let alone 1912.

The photo above is yet another good illustration of the telltale signs of electrodeposition. The silver deposited over the cap lip groove is characteristically lumpy. Likely a thin line of resist was painted on halfway through the process, and the nodules are the result of lifting or porosity of the resist. The vertical line from the cap lip which appears at first sight to be a scratch is in fact the surface echo of a nick cut into the underlying hard rubber to improve adhesion of the deposit layer.

California Constitution signing pen

While looking for something completely unrelated, I stumbled across mentions of a pen supposedly used by Pablo De La Guerra to sign the California Constitution of 1849, now held by the California State Library and viewable here and here. The nib is now missing, but the pen does appear to be of a form early enough to fit that date.

An early Edson

This Waterman sub-brand straight-cap came our way recently. Edson pens are rather less common than Remexes, and this one has a number of notable features. The barrel imprint reads "PATENT PENDING", and the nib imprint is unusual in its location and incorporation of the size number ("No. 3"). Most of the sub-brand nibs also have a heart-shaped vent hole, whereas this one is round.

Externally, the feed has the usual pre-Spoon Feed narrow profile. On the inside, however, it is a bit different, with an axial hole and added feed channel at the bottom.

Flexible-nib fountain pens on the cheap

Here's an alternative for those seeking fountain pens with nibs that will go from extra-fine to extra-broad -- modifying a new pen to accept a new dip pen nib:

Detailed discussion and photos here.

Pal pencils

Of all the many Eversharp-inspired metal mechanical pencils of the 'teens and twenties, the "Pal" must be one of the most common. The group shown above came out of a New Jersey stationery shop hoard several years ago, but it's taken until now to put them up for sale -- which prompted a bit of digging into their history.

As it turned out, not much digging was required, for the story of the Pal's introduction is recounted at some length in the advertising trade magazine, Printers' Ink ("Pal Pencil Gets National Distribution in Sixty Days", vol. 115 (Jun 2, 1921), pp. 17-20). The Hoge Manufacturing Co. of New York had recently added mechanical pencils to their line of metal products (see Jonathan Veley's Mechanical Pencil Museum entry here) when they decided to expand their market in dramatic fashion. Taking aim at the lower end of the Eversharp's price range, they priced their "Pal" at an even dollar ($1.50 in Canada), launching a nationwide advertising campaign that sought to sell a million pencils the first year. According to the article the Pal went on sale in early spring of 1921, with the first national advertisements to the general public appearing on March 26. A thousand phonograph records were sent out to key prospects to promote the new pencil, but who knows if any survive. The article describes them as 10-inch disks with an orange label, with "A Message from a Pal" in black, along with the name and address of The Hoge Manufacturing Co., Inc. The earliest advertisements to the trade that I have found appear in February (Office Appliances, vol. 33 (Feb 1921) p. 73).

Early advertisements, such as the two-page spread from the Saturday Evening Post shown above (Apr 23, 1921, pp. 76-77), indicate that the Pal was initially offered in only two models, a long version with a clip and a short version with a ring, both silver-plated (the convenience of stocking just two versions was emphasized in trade ads, e.g. Office Appliances, vol. 33 (Apr 1921) p. 100). Another feature of the early Pal pencils was a conventional incuse imprint, corresponding with what can be seen in the pencils in the photo at the top.

By September ads in trade magazines were touting the availability of Pal pencils in sterling silver and gold filled as well (American Stationer, vol. 89 (Sep 10, 1921), p. 15), but it appears Hoge's attempt to move upmarket was less than successful. By the next summer a new Pal line selling for only ten to fifteen cents was being introduced (Modern Stationer, vol. 5 (Jun 25, 1922), p. 53):

Subsequent announcements tell us more about the new Pals. Construction was lightened, the clip altered, and the "Pal" logo was now struck in relief. The blurb above (Office Appliances, vol. 35 (Aug 1922), p. 31) lists long clip and short ringtop models in "plain nickel, chased nickel, plain goldine, and chased goldine" -- eight variations in all. 

Neither in the ad above (op. cit, p. 153) nor in the ad below (Office Appliances, vol. 35 (Sep 1922), p. 182) is there any further mention of the original one-dollar silver-plated Pals, let alone sterling or gold filled Pals. There is a notice in The Bookseller and Stationer in December 1922, however, which suggests that the one-dollar pencil remained available, though this may have been more a matter of previous production exceeding demand than evidence of continuing production (vol. 7, (Dec 15, 1922), p. 25). The same notice also announces a new Pal Jr. aimed at children, with a painted finish in black, red, blue, and green and priced at 50 cents.

How late did the Pal remain in production? At this point it is hard to say, since the trade journals we rely upon have only been digitized up until 1921-22. There is a mention of Hoge as the maker of Pal pencils in the American Stationer of April 1928 (p. 36, snippet view only), so it seems safe to say production continued through the better part of the 1920s.

Hispanexco: Diamond Points for export

I stumbled across this advertisement recently in The Mexican Mining Journal, vol. 6 (April 1908), p. 31. The distinctive clip immediately identifies the pen as a Diamond Point, as one can see from the ad below which ran in American Exporter, vol. 61 (Jun 1908), p. 140.

The Hispano-American Export Company even kept the same model numbers, but they added a generous markup: $2 for a basic No. 50 eyedropper, including registered mail "to any post office in the world", for a model that could be bought from the manufacturer for $7.50 per dozen (I haven't been able to determine exactly how much the shipping would have been, but at the time registration cost only ten cents, and a domestic letter only two).

I've never actually run across any pens marked "Hispanexco" or "Hispano-American Export Co.", nor can I find any discussion online. But I've not done any buying in the Americas outside of the USA and Canada, so I'm hoping my pen friends south of the border will chime in if they've seen any. Some of the Hispanexco pens were fancier, too, as we see from this ad in a Spanish-language magazine published in Buffalo, New York (América, vol. 1 (July 1908), p. A13).

Diamond Point does seem to have been pushing export sales. Looking back through old copies of American Exporter, there aren't many fountain pen companies paying for ads, and most advertised for a just a year or two. Diamond Point wasn't advertising in 1907, but made a tentative start in 1908 (Modern/A. A. Waterman, Smith, and Wirt were the other penmakers advertising that year, all taking out much more ad space). In 1909 Diamond Point became a regular advertiser, joining A. A. Waterman and Crocker.

And if we look all the way back to 1897, a large contingent from South and Central America came to the Northeast to visit the big industrial exhibition that opened that summer in Providence, Rhode Island. Diamond Point placed a large bilingual advertisement, shown above, right below the long and detailed writeup of their visit in the Jewelers' Circular (vol. 34 (June 23, 1897), p. 27).

Fine silver overlay construction

The differences between early fine silver (.999) overlays and later overlays in sterling silver (.925) go well beyond metal content. Sterling silver overlays were made from sheet stock, rolled into tubes. Fine silver overlays were made by electrodeposition, and instead of being pushed onto a hard rubber pen, they were generally plated in place. On the barrel, a recess was cut so that when the silver was deposited, the surface of the silver would be level with that of the adjacent hard rubber. Cuts were made into the surface of the hard rubber where the silver was to go; once the silver was plated into and over these cuts, the overlay would be locked in place -- which is why you never see a fine silver overlay that has rotated or shifted, whereas this is common with sterling silver overlays, even where they have been crimped in place.

This construction is clearly visible in these photos of a Waterman barrel which formerly carried a fine silver filigree overlay.

Fine silver was also used for some of Waterman's early non-filigree overlays, such as this acid-etched half-overlay shown below. The same method of construction was used, and the photo clearly shows how the surface of the silver is level with that of the hard rubber. In this case the metal is not marked as being fine silver, but it is apparent that is what it must be.

There are other construction details that can also indicate electrodeposited fine silver, even when the metal is marked "STERLING", as is often the case. This is especially common in brands other than Waterman, perhaps due to sterling being by far more recognized by the general public, then and now.

The blobby splash of silver on the rim of the cap of this Waterman is a giveaway. Surface lumps simply don't occur on sterling silver flat sheet stock (or tube stock, though this was not the norm until much later). Another giveaway on filigree pens is scoring of the hard rubber at the perimeter of the cutouts, where the workman cut a little too deeply through the soft silver. This is generally not found on overlays made from sterling sheet stock, where the cutting must have been done with the overlay mounted on a mandrel. This clearly wasn't an option when fine silver was plated directly onto the hard rubber cap.

Scoring of this sort isn't always found on fine silver filigrees, however, especially on pens where the silver layer is very thin. As noted in a 1909 article (The Metal Industry, vol. 7, no. 7 (July 1909), pp. 241-242), selective deposition was another method used, as was removal of material by either reverse plating or dissolving with acid. Although I seem to have misplaced the photo, I own a Waterman "Chased" 222 with a "STERLING" mark in relief, which could only have been done by one of these three techniques, strongly suggesting that the entire overlay is actually electrodeposited fine silver. And while the 1909 article only discusses deposition directly onto caps and barrels, there is an illustration of what appears to be a Waterman Puritan/Patch -- confirming that complex relief work was being done by deposition and not just flat surfaces.

How might this have been done? I would posit that instead of plating directly onto hard rubber, a layer of pitch would have been applied, and the relief design impressed into the pitch. The impressions would be retouched by hand as necessary, then the pitch given a conductive coating and plated. The design would be somewhat softened, in essence being molded from the back, but could be sharpened by judicious use of hand chasing. The alternative would be to plate inside a multipart female mold, which would also require some hand finishing to clean away seam lines.

Much surely remains to be discovered about the making of overlays. As a final snippet, I will add the following, which appears in the previous issue of the same journal (The Metal Industry, vol. 7, no. 6 (June 1909), p. 234):

Geo. T. Byers, 69 John street, New York, manufacturer of gold and silver chased work, has recently put in a plant for silver deposit work on fountain pens, etc.

ADDENDUM: The image below illustrates how the cuts made into the hard rubber before plating could leave visible traces on the electrodeposited silver surface. These "nicks" are commonly found on thinner overlays, and are usually assumed to be the result of wear and usage rather than artifacts of original manufacturing methods.