Cap Actuated Ball Pens

[rfpdf1]

Does anyone know the reason why Parker changed from the cap actuated model to the twist action version? Also, does what are members' views on the merits of these two pens?

 

rfpdf1

[welch]

My guess: just that in the late '90s, when businessmen bought show-off ballpoints, Parker needed the Sonnet ballpoint to seem as posh as a MontBlanc. Roughly the same time, Parker was selling Frontier ballpoints with push-button tops. Going all the way back to the '50s, the P51 ballpoint is pretty much a cap-activated Parker Jotter. So was the P61 and so was P45 ballpoint. Maybe the thinking was: push-button suggests a Papermate; cap-activation suggests a balllpoint meant to come in a set with a fountain-pen?

 

This is all guess-work...no evidence other than having used all balloints mentioned, yes, going back to the "T-Ball Jotter".

[PeterBeoworld]

I use two ballpoints at work - a Jotter flighter (a little thin and a bit slippery) and a cap actuated Duofold (lovely though having been informed about the cost in the other thread, I am shocked!) The later Duofold ballpoints have never interested me as they don't seem to be related to the fountain pen. I confess to having some thoughts of stopping using it as losing it would seem inexcusable,but it is so nice to use that I will probably risk it!

My wife bought them for me new a good few years ago, but I have only just started using the ballpoint again.

[nxn96]

Parker was late to the ballpoint market. When Parker introduced the original Jotters in 1954, part of the logic of the design was the "cap" of the refill that would turn each time the cap was pressed. The idea was to reduce wear on the ball by having the refill unit "turn". Given that wear on a ball and filler on then existing ballpoints created gaps that were a common reason for "blop" in early ballpoint designs, this was just another reason why Parker was the great innovator of the age.

 

The button-cap actuator was used on the basic Jotter, whereas the full cap-actuated versions seem to have been more akin to the early upscale versions of the bp pen. However, the Classic, the higher end Parker bp/mp set that was introduced sometime in the 1960's, utilized the button-cap actuator. The first Parker bp that I can recall that used the twist mechanism was the Insignia, which came out in the early 1990's. Probably, much as welch suggested above, many "quality" pens by that time used a twist mechanism, and as the Insignia was introduced as the successor to the "Classic" as the higher-end Parker bp/mp set, twist was the way to go and another way to distinguish it from the earlier "Classic" line. Since then, the twist mechanism seems to be the "official" mechanism for new higher-end Parker bp models.

 

While the twist actuated models utilize the Parker refills, the twist mechanism no longer utilizes the "turn" that the refill cap design was designed for and as the button/cap actuated models were designed to function.

 

Personally, I think it's a shame that Parker seems to have abandoned the cap-actuated mechanisms for their pens. I always thought it was a sleek, elegant design that had a bit of "class" and "function" that other bp mechanisms lack. As it happens, my daily user bp is a vintage 45 Flighter that still functions as if it came out of Janesville last week.

Edited December 12, 2011 by nxn96