Mechanical Pencil Patents

[parkerpencollector]

I have several fabulous pads with patent drawings on them (the Vacumatic

and the 51) created by Anna Lawson. My wife recently requested that

I commission one with patent drawings from her favorite collectable,

mechanical pencils with figural advertising (pigs, cows, etc. on the top,

or clear compartments with wine bottles, cars, etc. floating inside). I

spent a while trying to find such a patent, but as yet have not been able

to locate one.

 

Can anyone short circuit my search and direct me to a patent which has an

advertising figural pencil? I only need the patent number, I can get the

patent myself. Thanks.

 

--Harry

[rhr]

Hi Harry,

 

Do you mean the watch-chain-charm pencil cases from the 1870s-80s, or the figural mechanical pencils from the 1940s-50s and the floatie ballpoints from the 1940s-60s? I can help you with all those charm pencil cases, if that's what you want. There are various by W. S. Hicks, and Le Roy W. Fairchild, and E. S. Johnson, and Charles L. Downes, and Aikin-Lambert, and others, but what you probably want are the modern floatie pens and figural pencils. I can help you with those, too, even though it's not my era.

 

Sylvester Lipic of the Lipic Pen Co. and Ritepoint Co., a maker of pencils and ballpoints in St. Louis, Mo., and William E. Neal, who assigned his patent to the Osborne Co., and licensed it to Ritepoint, came up with the idea for these advertizing figural floatie pens and pencils. Later in the 50s and 60s the market was flooded by such floatie pens, especially the strip-tease nudie pens marked "Made in Denmark", but they all originated in the Lipic and Ritepoint patents. Most of these patent numbers do not appear in the Kidd patent book.

 

Here they are.

 

D123,297

D133,881

2,215,084

2,237,883

2,329,631

 

There are other patents that I have not been able to track down as yet, since they are recorded only as "Patent Pending". There were patents for pencils and ballpoints of these types held by the Secretary Pen Co., also known as Progressive Products Inc., in Union, N. J., and Toronto, Ont., Canada. If anyone has any other info, or has found any other patent numbers, please add them to the list.

 

I hope you and your wife enjoy them.

 

Sincerely,

 

George.

 

:ph34r:

[parkerpencollector]

Hi George - this will give you a window into the current state of my life...

 

I just took a look at these patents that you thoughtfully sent me a month or so ago. They're *exactly* the ones I wanted to find! I have a whole tray of these pencils on a shelf in the library at home. (Technically, I think they're my wife's pencils, but she lets me buy for the collection.)

 

Thanks, I appreciate it!

 

-Harry

[rhr]

No problem, Harry. I'm glad you found what you were looking for.

 

For everyone else, in case you didn't know already, you can look at these patents (or any other patents) by typing, or cutting and pasting the patent numbers into the "Query" window in the following website. In fact, almost any 7-digit number under 6,889,369 will bring up a patent of some kind, not necessarily for a writing instrument.

 

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm

 

Sincerely,

 

George.

 

:ph34r: