Original Big 4 Fountain Pen Companies

[Roger W.]

My point is that it is quite a novel thing to say that Conklin was one of the big four for the purposes of answering the original posters question about who they were. During what is considered the 'golden age' of fountain pens, the classic big four did not include Conklin. Putting Conklin in with three others as the big four requires a caveat that it wasn't during the time frame usually thought about when discussing that subject.

 

Oh, agreed - Conklin missed the boat. They also got sold to money grubbers that didn't care and turned out terrible pens. At least when Wahl took over Boston they strove to keep the quality though the Tempoint years were bumpy.

 

Roger W.

[Florida Blue]

As much as pen connoisseurs wouldn't like to admit Wearever was the largest fountain pen manufacturer in the world by the 1950s making tens of millions of pens each year easily surpassing the production of Parker or Sheaffer.

But by the mid-'60s, Esterbrook was making more pens in seven plants worldwide: 600,000 per DAY. That's 6,000,000 pens every two weeks. Put that in your David Kahn and smoke it.

 

Wow, I had no idea how big Esterbrook got. I wouldn't think they would be able to sell so many pens with the ballpoint becoming popular in the 60s but I guess elsewhere in the world where they had factories the fountain pen was still king.

 

On a side note I think it's amazing that New Jersey was once a hub of fountain pen manufacturing with Wearever located in North Bergen and Venus which was acquired by Esterbrook in 1967 located in Hoboken.

[jpdyson]

ANM, if I could be so bold as to restate what I believe you're saying, it's that Conklin and Sheaffer couldn't be simultaneously "big-4" status, historically. To state it as such would be anachronistic, akin to mentioning the Model-T in the muscle car era.