Vintage Pens Of "average" Americans

[mathew1421]

I am interested in information about pens used in everyday business/work by the average American: Police officers, grocers, teachers, etc. I came upon an article about the special Sheaffer pen made with the military clip to conform to uniform standards for use in WWII and I wondered if there were other pens that would have been made specifically for certain occupations.

 

I love pens with that kind of story behind them, and it seemed like a good way of narrowing down what otherwise is almost an overwhelming field!

[jar]

Fountain pens were mostly for correspondence and long term documents.

 

The normal writing instrument was a pencil right on through the 60s and the advent of relatively functional ball points.

[welch]

My mom saved up and bought my dad a Parker Vacumatic when he was assigned to a carrier in the Pacific. She was a clerk/typist, and Vacs were not cheap, so I think that was a serious expense.

 

Parker made the Challenger for ordinary people; if you consider the prices, a P51 or a top-line Sheaffer would have been a luxury pen or a "special gift" pen.

 

At the mass-market end, aside from the all-time great Esterbrook, take a look at Wearever, Arnold, Travellers, and other pens you'll find if you search on "second-tier pens".

 

The UK had its own tiering...I recall that the Burnham was considered second-tier although they made some great pens.

[kathleen]

Bell System employees and many school systems used Esterbrook

Edited November 13, 2010 by kathleen

[mathew1421]

Welch and Kathleen, thanks so much for your replies. That's just the kind of information I'm looking for!

[tonybelding]

I wondered if there were other pens that would have been made specifically for certain occupations.

 

Here's a nice example: Esterbrook Doctor & Nurse Pens

[kathleen]

Check this thread in the Esterbrook forum

 

http://www.fountainp...ngraved-esties/

 

posts #8 and #9 have great photos

 

My son, FPN member CUTTER has a pen engraved with AAA logo and we each have Bell System pens.

Edited November 14, 2010 by kathleen

[welch]

On additional source: check eBay and look at the advertisements for fountain pens. You'll get a sense of how the pen was marketed, of the target audience. There are some fascinating stories, such as the Salz pen which became the Stratford. It's here in FP History.

 

The web has a good history and explanation of ("we won't be under-priced") Wearever, a company that still makes pots and pans, although they got out of the pen business around the early '70s.

 

Incidentally, as Jar suggests, I think the pen was the writing instrument for permanence...for record-keeping, for serious correspondence. See "The Pencil" by Henry Petroski for the complexity and uses ("I'll pencil you in") of that rough-draft tool that provided for the Thoreau family while Henry David was living by Walden Pond. Not just a simple chunk of wood.

Edited November 14, 2010 by welch

[weapon]

Vintage pen of the "average American"? You should probably be looking at a Uni-ball from the week before last...

[nxn96]

Before the advent of a reliable, relatively inexpensive ballpoint, pencils were probably far more common in everyday general use than they are today. Not only were there mechanical pencil offerings from most of the major pen manufacturers, but there were companies like Autopoint and Dur-O-Lite that pretty much existed to produce mechanical pencils. We haven't even considered wooden pencils....

 

It's interesting most all Sheaffer and Parker lines back in the vintage era offered a mechanical pencil to complement their fountain pen offerings. Today, if you go to the Parker website, none of the higher end lines (Duofold, Sonnet, Premier) offer a pencil option; same with Sheaffer. Cross is still in that space, as is the successor Autopoint, but most newer mechanical pencils you find these days are the disposables.

 

As to fountain pens, we tend to think of Waterman, Sheaffer, Parker, Esterbrook, etc. Most of these were the middle to upper line pens that generally used better materials and were constructed to last longer than their less expensive counterparts. Because they were more expensive than the cheap pen you could buy at a Woolworth or SS Kresge, their owners probably took better care of them. That's why you find a lot more vintage Parkers on eBay than vintage Wearevers. A lot more people used a steel-nib lesser name (or no-name) pen they bought, used, and replaced when they started to leak or the steel nib wore down. Even the "higher end" companies had "lower end" offerings. I have a 1950's Parkette set that someone told me was "rare" in the sense that he had never seen one before that wasn't cracked!

 

$12.50 for an entry level "51" in 1941 was serious money. Much like a good watch, a high quality fountain pen in the vintage era was a bit of a luxury.

Edited November 16, 2010 by nxn96

[gross]

The U.S. Navy used Esterbrooks during World War II and for a time afterwards before switching to Sheaffer ballpoints.

[pajaro]

In the 1950s most of the adults I knew used cheap ballpoints, usually costing $0.10. A dime. Few adults I knew then were using fountain pens of any sort for anything ordinary (they were abandoning fountain pens), at least in the Boston Mass. area. My dad's Parker 51 was for serious work.

 

In Catholic schools I had to use dip pens into grade 5, and fountain pens (a $5 pen was standard) from grade 5 on. Fortunately, my family moved to Florida in 1960, and from then on I used a mix of Sheaffer cartridge pens (translucent type), Wearever el cheapos (UGH!) and cheap ballpoints. When I went to college I bought some Cross ballpoints. When I got out of college and went in the Air Force, I bought a Parker 51 set at the BX at Lackland AFB. I still have that Parker 51.

[Parker51]

Fountain Pens also were used as gifts to mark important occasions which is why you will find many with personal engravings. I have a top of the line Sheaffer's Snorkel that was given to my father as a graduation present to mark his completing High School. I also know that just as Germans would give high quality Fountain Pens to young men when they were confirmed in the (Lutheran) Evangelical Church in Germany, or if they were Jewish, to mark their Bar Mitzvahs, their counterparts in the U.S. did the same.

 

Another use for high Quality Fountain Pens was as wedding presents. Parker made some his and her sets for this purpose.

 

And still another was as a Thank You present. For a long time in the U.S. it was customary at Christmas to give someone that one had contact with in business wham had assisted one a minor luxury. This was especially if it was extra assistance above and beyond the persons official role and the contact and assistance was likely to continue indefinitely. An example of this custom featured prominently in one episode of Madmen. My grandfather used to receive at Christmas a variety of presents from both those that advertised in the newspaper that he worked for and from those at other newspapers that he helped. He received enough Alcohol to keep his bar well stocked and seldom resorted to making purchases, he received tickets to Plays, Concerts, Movies (I did not need to pay for a movie ticket until I wanted to see Star Wars when it first came out and the pass was no good. I averaged seeing a new film every week until I left for College) and most importantly, I have a half a dozen new old stock Parker Fountain Pens from the 1930s given to him by the publisher of a neighbouring towns newspaper as a Thank You for the help he gave her. The best of the pens she gave him was a little older, a Gold Inlay-ed with Engine Turning Parker Jack Knife Safety.

[Tweel]

I agree about the artificial (or "Darwinian") prominence of higher-priced pens, nxn96. I can't say what was typical, but my parents grew up before the advent of ballpoints. My mother has no idea what brands her family used -- they were just "pens", scattered around in glasses for anyone to grab. The only specific pen that I know my father used was a Webster, from Sears.

 

-- Brian

[nxn96]

Another thought along this line: desk pens. Back in the era when more jobs involved a fixed desk at a fixed location, a desk pen in a holder on a heavy base was a popular item from the major pen manufacturers. Esterbrook seems to have been a big player in this market, including desk pens with a chain for public/commercial use and combination dip-pens with combination inkwells. Parker and Sheaffer were large players too, but similar to as Parker51 noted, a lot of these pens had a brass plate attached to commemorate a special occasion.

 

Again, it speaks to what writing instruments people carried and where/when people needed to use an ink pen.

[jimhughes]

I have my Father's Brothers, Paternal Uncle, pen. It was given to him by my Paternal GrandMother, his Mom or the occassion of obtaining his pilots license in 1936. It was a Sheaffer 3-25 Jade Short Clip. He went to work for Shell Oil like his Father. Pre WW2 he flew Catalina's and Grumman Goose in the Dutch East Indies, with the home office of East Asia Petroleum in Singapore in 1938.

During WW2 he flew Black Cats with Naval Squadron VP-71. Post WW2 it was back with Shell in Venezuela. He retired in the late 60's. My father also used Sheaffers, a black Lifetime, given to him by my Mom when he joined the Navy in WW2. It had a balance like appearance as I recall. Jim

[Andy M-S]

I graduated high school in 1976. What I remember from my elementary days are desks with holes for inkwells, and in about second or third grade, buying a Sheaffer cartridge pen (clear red barrel, pointy ends, came with a bunch of washable blue cartridges) and using that pen and others like it until well into high school. In college, I tried felt-tips, etc., but kept trying a series of fountain pens--almost always going back to Sheaffers. When I was in graduate school in the '80s, the bookstore at the University of Chicago still sold Sheaffer fountain pens--inlaid-nib types, plastic barrel and cap, squeeze-fill, available in multiple colors and nib sizes. I kept using those (and losing them, alas) until I traveled to Europe in 1983 and bought a stainless steel Mont Blanc S-line in Austria. It wrote very nicely, but leaked very badly and the cap seal never really worked. But I used it until my spouse-to-be and I got engaged in 1986, whereon she gave me as an engagement present a Mont Blanc 144 that I still use on a daily basis (I think it cost her something like $150, which was serious money in those days).

 

Now, in the early '80s it may have been that we were in a fountain-pen renaissance...but nearly every other grad student that I knew used a fountain pen of one sort or another (the Mont Blanc student pens were very popular in those days). But I recall that the Flax Co. in Chicago had cases and cases (and catalogs) of "everyday" fountain pens, including lots of Lamys (and here I must confess that I've never been able to get one of those to write well, though I know others like them). Fountain pens were "still" common every-day writing instruments at that time.

 

I am now working on my third career, finishing up law school, and a number of professors--and students--use fountain pens regularly (Parkers and Pelikens are favored). Nothing like when I was in grad school, but if I really needed to borrow a CC or so of ink, I know where I could get it.

[bitterwonder]

My uncle, an electrician had an appliance shop and owned a 1935 Waterman.

(I learned to write with this pen in the 60's and my father used to remark how his brother did the books with it and he was able to get small, fine writing with it)

My father's godfather, who kind of ran a dock in 19th century Brooklyn, had a Waterman till the mid 1920's.

My father's fountain pens are ratty no names but write well. (1920's or 1930's pens).

 

There seemed to be always pens and ink around the house, remnants from the 1920's and 30's.

 

Sorry I cannot be more specific.

[bigJack82]

I have a large Wearever pen and pencil combination. The capped length is 6 inches. The usage would be limited to in house versus being carried due to weight and size. I don't know what year this was made. It is a beautiful marble finished pen. I will attempt to attach pictures.

[Ernst Bitterman]

Not an American, but an eminently average family-- the pen below I got from my wife, who got it from her father, who had it in his toy chest in the late 1940s or very early 1950s. Sturdy, not unattractive, with a steel point.

 

http://dirck.delint.ca/Enduro.jpg