Hi All,

So there I was, browsing around on eBay, and I happened on a listing for a 1928 Sheaffer's Saturday Evening Post advertisement. It extols the virtues of the black-and-pearl "De Luxe" Lifetime pen and pencil in the piquant style of the period. The specific message of the ad is that Sheaffer uses the "finest materials" to make its instruments, and the copy cites a specific example as follows:

Materials, the finest of materials, have made Sheaffer products great. For instance, Waspalumin, one of the most costly of commercial alloys, is generously used in both these superlative writing instruments. (Emphasis added.)

Waspalumin: has anyone encountered this particular term before? My guess is that this is nothing more or less than plain old aluminum, with the last two letters dropped and the W.A. Sheaffer "Wasp" acronym prepended...to suggest a proprietary alloy, I suppose.

How nice to have another coined Sheafferism to join the ranks of Visulated, Chem-O-Pure, Radite, Forticel et al.

Cheers,

Jon

Rador nib (parker Parkette). Lustraloy. Etc. Go figure.
d

I don't think "Waspalumin" was a take-off on the Sheaffer "Wasp" sub-brand, since that line was not introduced until 1934. The Wasp line was intended to attract price-sensitive buyers (most everyone in that depression-era year) without diluting the high-quality, mid- to high-price image of the regular Sheaffer line of products.

That having been said, the Wasp name was a take off on W. A. Sheaffer Pen (company) (WASP company), so the firm's management could have been thinking of ways to build the brand by using the founder's initials even then.

Hello Professor,

Agreed on both points. There's evidence that the WASP acronym was in use at Sheaffer, internally, before the WASP brand was launched. I've got a desk pen, 1930s vintage, that was used in the Sheaffer offices. It's imprinted "W.A.S.P. CO./MAILING DESK NO. 1."

For that matter, the acronym seems to have outlived the WASP brand as well. I've also got a Fineliner pencil from the Sheaffer typing pool, c. 1950s, engraved "IBM/WASP CO."

Here are photos of both instruments:

Click to view attachment

Cheers,

Jon

Note that Forticel was not a Sheafferism, but rather belonged to Celanese.

--Daniel

Dear Jon:

What's really fascinating about the mailing desk pen (pen no. 2 in your excellent photo) is that the "WASP CO" imprint has - just below it - "W.A. Sheaffer Pen Co." clearly imprinted.

I know we have some participants who are or have been in touch with former Sheaffer folks, including a few who were with the firm in the '30s and '40s. I wonder if "Waspco" was part of the Sheaffer "language." Organizations often develop their own internal language - part of the organizational culture - and sometimes these words, phrases, or terms make their way into broader usage (e.g., the WWII-era US Army term "FUBAR" - which means "fouled up beyond all recognition" when sanitized for public display).

Perhaps one of the FPNers who has had contact with Sheaffer employees can verify.

Daniel, thanks for the correction re: Forticel. Credit where credit's due!

Professor, I suspect you're right: I wouldn't be at all surprised if "WASP" was a common internal Sheaffer abbreviation well before the WASP pen was a glimmer in anyone's eye. It may be that repurposing the acronym for a consumer brand was, among other things, a sort of inside joke. I seem to recall, vaguely, instances in other industries where an internal working name/abbreviation wound up becoming an official product name. (It's my recollection that the feline nicknames for the various generations of the Mac OSX operating system - Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, etc. - were not originally intended for public use.) It's pure speculation, but one wonders. I do hope someone with inside Sheaffer knowledge weighs in.

It's my impression that the Mailing Desk desk pen (that looks odd, sorry) was just an ordinary desk pen, complete with the usual imprint - pulled off the line, pressed into company service and given an additional imprint to make sure it stayed put. Nice to know, at least, that Sheaffer equipped Mailing Desk No. 1 with a White Dot pen.

Cheers,

Jon

Jon,

Just curious if aluminum was used in Sheaffer's "De Luxe" Lifetime pens and pencils of the late '20s? What you say makes sense and aluminum was much costlier 80 years ago, but I've never noticed anything that looked like aluminum in Sheaffers of that era. It's probably in there somewhere.

Jon