This is a spin-off from a comment about the Scnell Pencil-pen in the thread on pen Tiers.

The comment was a reference to some info on Richard Binder's extremely informative website, where he writes:
- link.

Schnell can be credited for setting off a new wave of popularity for the fountain-pen and pencil combination, but his was not the first. Dip pens, of course, had been made as combination pencil-penholders since the mid 1800s. However, I know that Eagle produced an ED fountain-pen combination as early as 1913. The following is a scan from the Sears Spring 1913 catalog with the Eagle combination pencil-pen (2nd from the top).



I am not certain if this is the first mention of the Eagle pencil-pen combination, as I do not have catalog info prior to 1913. I do note that this pen does not appear in 1914 or later, so it must not have taken off.

Later, but also prior to Scnells 1929 pen is a "Good Service" combination from either the 1927 or 1928 catalog (I will update with scan later) with a notable "D" on the lever-end. Someone was making combos before Scnell set off the wave.

I have not been able to find a patent that would work for the Eagle pen shown above, but surely there must have been one. In doing a Google Patent search, I was only able to come up with two patents- US1150068 Herman Schroeder's 1915 patent for what appears to be a retractable-safety fountain pen, and the much earlier Houschild Patent number 161228 from 1875 for a combination pen-pencil. Anyone know of any other patents? Or a candidate for the patent Eagle might have used?

John

Good questions here.

The Eagle combo would appear to be the first fountain pen combo mass-produced, judging from what it to be found out in the field. I cannot think of anything comparable, either earlier or contemporary.

The earliest fountain pen and pencil combinations I have seen are a Bion-type pen with a porte-crayon at the back end (late 18th or very early 19th century) and a similarly-configured Sheffer-patent pen (2nd 1/4 19th century, possibly slightly later). Both are unusual variants of instruments made in limited numbers and very rare today.

What about Arnold? I have never been to clear as to when they started but I have more than a few.

This is a worthy project for further investigation. The conventional wisdom that Schnell's Penselpen set off the craze for combos at the end of the 1920s would seem to go back to the articles on Schnell in the Pen Fancier's Magazine, and in particular to a publicity interview with Schnell back when the Penselpen was first being marketed. Any claims about priority in combo manufacture in such a context would have to be taken with a big grain of salt, of course, but to my knowledge no one has actively tried to look more closely at what really happened with the combo craze. Did Schnell indeed set it off, or was he just one of many who tried to ride it?

A design patent, possibly; a utility patent, no. Too much prior art to be overlooked by the patent examiners, I think.

True, the combination of a pen and pencil is not new, nor really are any of the components.

Here is the long overdue catalog page - Sears, Fall 1927, showing a Good Service pen-and-pencil combination with a "D" on the lever. This is notably different from the other CE Barrett/National made Good Service pens. Wonder who made it? I don't think it looks like a Schnell product.

Either way, they had a combo about 2 years before the 1929 date given for the PencilPen.



John

I have only recently sold a Packard pen pencil combo on e-bay.

Very nice looking 30's ( I think) brownish celluloid instrument with a large fine steel nib. Actually, the fountain pen wrote surprisingly well despite limited ink capacity.

Where pen/pencils very popular? At the couple antique shops around here, it seems at least half of the pens they have are what look to be low end combo pens. It made me wonder if combos were more of the pen/pencil of a thrifty workingman, e.g. the masses of people, or if it just happened to be what was left at the crappy antique stores in the area.

Aaron

A very good question. From the overall number surviving, I think there can be no doubt of their popularity -- at least in the USA in the 1930s (combos seem not to have captured the fancy of consumers in other countries with which I am familiar). And it is also incontrovertible that combos are disproportionately uncommon in the contemporary output of the top-tier American penmakers. Some only dipped their toes in the water, so to speak: Parker and Waterman combos were not advertised or catalogued (excepting the earlier Waterman desk pens with pencil-ended tapers). Others did go into full production -- Sheaffer, Conklin, Mabie Todd -- but even there it appears the models were not terribly popular, judging from the numbers of survivors.

I think the (economic) class division is the best hypothesis so far regarding cheapie vs top-line combos. That still doesn't tell us, however, where the line should be drawn. Were the cheapies bought primarily by the working class or somewhere further up the scale -- especially during the Depression? It would be very interesting and useful to have more hard data on the demographics of the pen market in this era (and other eras past).

A bit of a followup -- we really should try to nail down the dates of the Eagle combo through some other sources. I wouldn't assume that it didn't sell well just from its absence from one retailer's catalog, especially since I've had a few of them with the distinctive Eagle metal clip, bearing the patent date of 1915.

An example is (at least temporarily) visible here.

Super combo David, really excellent condition. I wonder about the emblem on the nib - it looks like the interstate highway sign. Is there a known story behind it?

John

That's the standard Eagle nib imprint of the era. I don't know anything about the backstory, if any.

My opinion has been that they were popular as a novelty with some functionality (i.e. keep one writing instrument in your purse instead of two). I say "purse" because it seems that every pen/pencil I see is relatively small.

There were a great number of large combo's with pocket clips as well. I have seen quite a few that were longer than 5 1/2".

John

John et al,

Interesting topic and not one discussed previously AFAIK. I don't have much to add except in one of my areas of interest, pens made by George Kraker dba the Michael George Co., I just acquired a Pencraft combo made 1928-32 when the company was in Libertyville, IL. A good size pen/pencil with a 14K #6 nib. Writes well but the ink capacity is pretty small. Here are pics.

Dennis B

Dennis - that is a great pen. I love the stepped clips on some of the Pencraft pens.

On the main topic - I guess we also have to consider early combo's in other countries - this looks like some sort of early British Combo - GILDER LEVER FOUNTAIN PEN / COMBINATION PENCIL in BOX

John

True. I forgot about the Remington combo I have which is at the 5-1/2 size.

I'd like to contribute to this discussion with my new find. This weekend, at a flee-market in Montevideo, I stumbled upon an Eagle Fountain pen and pencil combination. It is a chased black hard rubber pen, with two gold filled overlayed bands decorated with a floral pattern. The barrel is marked with the words EAGLE "PRINCE". The pencil end tip is knurled and works well. Turning it clockwise it separates from the barrel and if you push it back the lead extends. Turning counterclockwise allows the lead to be pushed back in.
It is an eye-dropper filling pen. It has a No. 2 Swan, Mabie Todd and Brad 14 carat gold nib, probably not the correct nib for the pen. The cap is threaded and it has an after-market chrome clip. The length with the cap posted is 5-13/16"
In the Fischler and Schnider book "Fountain Pens and Pencils", page 271, the authors claim that Eagle was the first company to manufacture the a fountain pen pencil combination in 1890. This example looks very much like the one on the 1913 Sears catalogue, except for the barrel bands. There are no patent markings on the pen and I am not sure if this pen is of the same design as the first combo manufactured by Eagle. Check out the picture.

Click to view attachment

Nice find!
The nib is a replacement; the originals bear the "14K" mark inside a shield.
The behavior of the pencil end is typical for these combos, and indicates that the lead carrier tube that is attached to the turning end has come loose at the other end, inside the body of the combo. Just about every Eagle combo I've found has had this problem -- it is very much an inherent weakness of the design. In fact, I have one on my workbench right now, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to repair the mechanism so that it will stay repaired.

I wish people would stop repeating the old red herring that Schnell set off the wave of combo-making in 1929, because there were many before Schnell. I think it's time we stopped buying into the self-promoted hype that Schnell himself started, that is, that he was the first to produce a combo in the 1920s. His combos didn't come along until the very end of the decade, and there were many earlier examples produced in both the US and the UK that predated his combo. [See the FPN topic cited below.] In fact, the wave started in the mid-1920s, mostly in 1925, although many of the patents may never have reached the production stage. Here's a list.

Tallman, 1,417,642
Bartle, Glickman, & Jacovitz, 1,427,711, a piston filler combo

Joseph M. Gilliam, Dubel Servis Corp., see British patent no. GB222,868 , issued on June 18, 1925, and applied for in the US on Oct 6, 1923, but not issued. In fact, I think the wave was started by Tallman and Gilliam in 1922-25. Gilliam probably couldn't receive a US patent for his version of the combo because of Tallman’s patent, which pre-dated his very narrowly.

Lundmark, 1,479,996
Day, 1,495,890
Alland, 1,507,903
Detrick, 1,508,090
Slack, 1,510,613
Chen, 1,523,753, looking very much like a Waterman's combo with its barrel-end thread

Nudelman, 1,526,365, it even had a sliding lever like Schnell's, to which Schnell purchased the rights. See FPN topic Who was Nudelman.

Spang, 1,530,432
Waldorf, 1,532,284
Chesne, 1,533,162
Anshen, 1,534,629
Olsen, 1,538,055
Hofmann & Schroeder, 1,539,086
Visitacion, 1,554,769, and many others in 1926 and later.

Even Schnell's familiar airplane clip design no. D73,416 was filed and issued in 1927, well before 1929, but Sheaffer's design no. D78,794 for its combos was filed in 1928 and issued in 1929.

And how about patent no. 1,608,359, a "Fountain Pen And Single-Shot-Pistol Combo"?

You can find all these patent numbers, and more, in my book indexed under “Combo”.

George Kovalenko.

Thanks George,

So any idea about the Eagle pens, or the claim that Eagle made the first combo in the 1890s (quoted from Fischler and Schnider, above)?

John

Thank you David,
Please let me know how to fix the pencil once you figured it out.
Thank you,
Victor.

John,

I have one possible candidate for the Eagle combo in Volume 1 of my patent book, but that volume has not been published, yet. I need to see the pencil mechanisms from the combos owned by Victor and David for comparison before I commit to any positive identification. Do you think you guys could remove the pencil mechanisms from the barrels of your combos and post pictures? David, if you have one apart on your workbench right now, could you post pics of the mechanism taken apart?

As for the claim that Eagle made the first combo in the 1890s, the actual quote from the Fischler and Schneider blue book follows. "Another popular pen was their pen/pencil combination similar to that which most other pen makers produced in the 1930s. Eagle produced their first pen/pencil combination in 1890. They had been making dip-pen/pencil combinations since 1870. This pen/pencil combination was a simple black hard rubber item." Now, it's unfortunate that they didn't include a picture of this "simple black hard rubber item". If it has a safety cap and raised threads like the one in Victor's photo, then it dates to the 1910s at the earliest. If there is such a combo produced in the early 1890s, then it would have to have a straight slip cap, or a cone slip cap if produced in the very late 1890s or early 1900s. Perhaps Fischler and Schneider were guessing at the age of the Eagle combos in the absence of sufficient information. It all depends upon what that "simple black hard rubber item" that they mention but do not illustrate looks like. Henry Gostony, of the ballpoint book, sold a well-illustrated Eagle combo on Ebay in 2005, and Daniel Kirchheimer posted a picture of his Eagle combo on Pentrace in 2005, but those two had threaded caps as well.

The only Eagle "combinations" from the 1890s I have found so far are the ones in the pictures below, but they aren't exactly "simple black hard rubber items". One is a pen-and-wooden-pencil-and-jack-knife-case from 1892, but not a fountain pen and pencil combo, and the other one is a brass-barreled, glass-cartridge fountain pen with a lead holder on its barrel end from the early 1890s. Perhaps that's what they meant. These metal pens were usually japanned black, but the japanning usually wore off.

George Kovalenko.

Actually see also:

D59,945 Combination Fountain Pen and Pencil, Stanislaw Zdanowicz, Filed May 26, 1921 Issued Dec. 6 1921

An interesting quote from an earlier publication.

"PREMIUM OFFER. The October and November issues of The Clerk announced a premium offer of a diamond point combination fountain pen and pencil, to be given any member securing two new members for the Brotherhood. " Vol XI, Issue 12. Dec. 1912 p. 410.

Antonios, thanks for pointing out design no. D59,945. I chose not to index the word "combination" in my book because it was used to describe so many disparate and unrelated writing instruments. I then forgot to annotate that design as a "combo" in my book in order for the indexing program to pick it up, and that's also why I didn't find it earlier today when I searched my patent database for the word.

I would also like to thank Antonios for pointing out Gilliam's UK combo patent on the EPO website in time for me to include it in Volume 2 of my book.

George Kovalenko.

Dont mention it George.
What about 1,334,860 which is in the book ?

There are actually quite a few combos before 1922, but I don't think all of them were manufactured and merchandised. I wasn't trying to be comprehensive in my posts above, but merely concentrating on the cluster of combo patents around 1925. I did extract and prepare a list of all the combo patents and designs in both volumes of my book a while ago, and the list is almost a hundred strong. The earliest one goes back to 1819. ;~)

George Kovalenko.

George,
Here is a picture of the pencil mechanism. It appears broken as David indicated.
Victor

Click to view attachment

Thanks for posting the picture, Victor.

Well, it's not the patent I was thinking of, but here’s a more likely one. It's a patent for a mechanical pencil with a spiral mechanism assigned to the Eagle Pencil Co., and it's said to be a "pro- and re-pelling" pencil in the specifications of the patent, 863,258 . I don't think it's the right one, but it's an example of the same spiral-mechanism type. They could have used one of their older patents, but this one is the nearest in time to the hard rubber Eagle combo. The patent mentioned within the specifications, 33,034, doesn't help much because it's not a spiral type.

First of all, Victor and David, is the pencil mechanism in your combos a pro-pell and re-pell type? And can you see inside the tube still inside the barrel? Does it have a spiral groove to engage with the teeth of the lead carrier sticking out through the spiral slot in the inner, co-axial tube attached to the tip?

The difference between yours and the one in the patent is the slight twist in the slotted lead carrier tube in yours, but this was probably done to increase the speed of the pro-pell and re-pell action. It's as if they took part B in Fig.3 of the patent and gave it a twist.

This inner spiral tube looks like it was once attached to the outer spiral tube by a crimp at the end of the inner tube. You can see an example of this crimp in the above patent, at the point marked "y", called the "annular shoulders on the guide tube". These annular shoulders seem to have been uncrimped when the two were separated. When the tip is removed from the barrel, the two spiral tubes should come out together, but very likely the outer tube is seated and gripped too tightly inside a hole inside the barrel, and when the tip is removed, the crimp gives out before the hold on the whole mechanism gives up its grip on the outer tube.

The solution is to find a mandrel that fits snugly inside the outer tube so that it can be gripped without squashing and collapsing the tube end. The smooth end of an appropriately sized drill bit would probably do just fine. Then the inner tube has to be seated back inside the outer tube and recrimped. This probably won't hold, and will separate again, so the solution is probably to solder or weld the tip after recrimping. And you'd want to use a hard solder like brass or silver rather than lead.

This is all contingent upon your mechanisms being of the same type as the one in the patent. It also depends upon whether you want to alter your pens from their original states. Perhaps leaving them alone is the best course, if you want to maintain the value of your combos as collector's pieces. I prefer the challenge, myself. ;~)

George Kovalenko.

Sorry, no pics yet.
Let me assure you, however, that George has the right patent.
These pencil mechanisms were made out of very light brass, so while it seems that there are two helically-formed tubes, in reality, the inner one started out with a simple straight slot. Over time, the repeated torque applied to the front end of the pencil deforms the inner tube, leaving it twisted. This in turn causes the lead carrier to bind, leading to further deformation. The outer tube is a very tight press fit into the hard rubber barrel; I believe some mastic or shellac was also used to hold it in place. A tight-fitting metal rod inserted into the tube and heated will assist in removal.

The patent leaves open exactly how the inner tube is to be connected to the outer tube at point "y", but it is apparent from the examples I've seen that the inner tube was equipped with four tabs at its end which were bent outwards and over, in order to allow the tubes to rotate in relation to each other, without permitting the inner tube to move longitudinally in relation to the outer. What I am not certain about is whether these tabs were intended to bear directly upon the inner face of the outer tube, or if (as I suspect) they bore instead upon a thin washer of the same diameter of that outer tube, which would greatly reduce the tendency of the tabs to bind when the inner tube rotates.

In any event, the tab solution is inherently weak. In the most recent example I've been working on, the tabs were quite bent and fatigued, so I trimmed the inner side of the outer tube by about 2mm and cut a corresponding 2mm length of brass tubing of the same outer diameter (though of greater wall thickness), soldering the latter piece to the end of the inner tube. This is the standard method of construction found on Victorian propelling pencil mechanisms, and is very strong.

Note that the inner tube is usually soldered to a metal plug that is press-fitted into the hard rubber nose cone. It should also be noted that the inner tube should be untwisted as part of the restoration.

Here is a combo ad from March 1909 p. 32 from Popular Mechanics on Google (thanks David for pointing the availability of the magazine on Google books).
George does that address tell you anything?