In a french magazine I came across this article where this is a mention to the Duocolor a UNIC safety (the pen on the right).
It looks like a two-nib pen. Can someone educate us about this pen and the company? Thanks

The Pullman seems to be a close ancestor to the Vanishing Point.

Here is an article on PT about the Zerollo double nib pen. http://www.pentrace.com/article112300025.html , which seems rather close to this one. Could UNIC be simply the French trademark of Zerollo ?

EDIT : in that article, it is mentioned that UNIC got the license for that pen in France. So this is really a variation of the Zerollo.

According to French sites, UNIC started in the 1920's. That pretty much all I can find right now. If you go to 1001pens.com and search UNIC, there are some nice examples, in particular a gold overlay and molted red rubber safety that I would not spit on .

I'll paste it the text of a Bloomsbury auction that exists only in Googles cache now :


A JOHN DUNHILL TWOPEN, Italian…276. A JOHN DUNHILL TWOPEN, Italian, circa 1935 spiral chased black hard rubber with two John Dunhill 14ct nibs, rare, excellent or better.

£600 - £1000

A rare ’Zerollo Duo Colour'-type double pen; this example one of a number produced for sale under licence in England arranged by John Dunhill, son of Alfred Dunhill. The manufacture of these pens was previously attributed to OMAS, due to Armando Simoni's well-known interst in double-nibbed pens, but research by Luca De Ponti has indicated that Zerollo may only have purchased parts from OMAS, specifically nibs and clips.
The design and construction of this extraordinarily complex pen can be deduced from various Patents filed it Italy, France, the United States and the United Kingdom between December 1930 December 1932 filed by Mirko Chelazzi and Dino Fruilli. Both were Italians from Genoa, Chelazzi of 2, Piazza Verdi, and Fruilli having recently moved from the same address to 8A, Via della Libertà. It seems that Chelazzi and Fruilli are the true inventors of the Duo-Colour/Two-Pen, as theirs are the only names to appear on the foreign patents, and not those of Simoni, OMAS, or Dante Davide Zerollo; furthermore there seems to be no assign to an employer or manufacturer which is the normal practice for inventions by ’in-house' designers.
The pen itself is a work of engineering genius, as revealed by the immensely detailed French patent, where the specifications of the claim run to six typeset pages, and no fewer than thirty-five figures, showing precisely why this is considered to have been one of the most complex pens ever manufactured.



Patents in question :
FR728038 and GB397736 (The French one is much more detailed.)

Beautful!... Great info Dennis. Thanks. ( I am starting to feel rusty on my google skills).

These are very interesting pens.

I have alway been curious about double pens - the ones with two nibs where one could have one inked in blue and the other in red.

There is also the "later" 1945 OMAS Colorado. A pen that splits lengthwise in half and has two nibs. I am serching for a large picture of that pen too.

Revisiting this old post
Today, I was lucky to find this information about a pen from 1912.
Am eyedropper with two compartments for two inks and 2 nibs: (US Pat #1,020,221) by Joseph Rauchenecker of Chicago, IL.
I would guess that it might be limited in ... flex

OK, here is another "double" pen (i.e., that can use two inks at the same time).
Two eyedroppers with one cap. Each body has threads in both ends.

by the Chameleon Fountain Pen Company of Illinois:)

Nice penmanship in those patents. I wonder of those are AutoCAD fonts or some TrueType pattern I have never seen.....

Ron

Hi Ron. I suspect that the fonts used in the patents (1911, 1929) predate Autocad by a couple years or so.

Regards,

Gerry

Damn the luck.... you think I can get an upgrade to those old fonts to work on a modern CAD system? They have more charactor than the fonts on my winbloze machine. I don't have a CAD program on the Linux box I normally use.

and... on a semi-serious note. The older master draftsmen, and draftswomen, had more expressive skills in drawing. It relates in both drawings and lettering. I enjoy reviewing old plans of about anything boat plans to full size loftings of airplanes to things like patent drawings. They seem to be a quick trip back in time for me.

Ron

Funny you should mention that .

Have you seen Corien's offer for fonts?

http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...indpost&p=66701

Yes, those old documents are often quite the trip down memory lane alright. They seem to convey a sense of the era, perhaps the pace ot the times then. Sometimes though, it's quite a struggle to read if the script is highly stylized. I never was good at decyphering some handwriting - would have made a lousy pharmacist.

Gerry

BTW - there's a post in repair about a Dunhill Twopen - Here .

If the value is anywhere near the one in the earlier post in this thread, it should be taken care of carefully.

Regards,

Gerry