Hi Everyone,

Ron Lee just sent me this website with a stash of Sheaffer factory pictures. Some of you Sheaffer nuts will get a real kick out of it, especially so soon after the Sheaffer factory visit put together by Sam and Frank Fiorella of Pendemonium.

Go to the Library of Congress website.

http://www.loc.gov/

Click on "American Memory" in the upper left. In the upper right corner there is a box called "Search All Collections". Type in "sheaffer fountain pen". You should get 11 hits, including 10 photos by Theodor Horydczak of the Sheaffer factory.

There are also other print docs and pics on the website. Try searching for "fountain pen". They have run the print docs through an OCR system, so the text is completely searchable.

George.

Very interesting, George! Thanks for the link; Sheaffer pens are my personal vintage favourites (for modern pens, I prefer Pelikans).
My favourite photographs from Horydczak's bunch are the pictures of : a "Line of nib grinders and their operators", and the photo entitled "Final act of the pen manufacture". In the latter photo, several Sheaffer employees are seen doing a final testing of the pens, with ink (I assume) and paper....I wonder if all/many/any modern pen companies do a "final test" nowdays, on their more expensive pens, that is (ie. not the mass-produced, inexpensive student pens)?

Mine, too. When I saw that phrase "the final act", and I looked at the photo and saw an image of a woman's hand in the act of writing, I thought to myself, "Yeah, writing is the final stage of thinking". It's the act of committing the idea to paper, unless of course you might want to argue that the final act is printing and publishing a book. ^_^

George.