history – Page 3 – The Steel Pen

November 22, 2017October 16, 2018

Pen History, 1840’s: C. C. Wright & Co.

Charles Cushing Wright was born in Damariscotta, Maine in 1796. His early life was a story of hardship (orphaned!, abandoned!), drama (poisoning! oppression!) and hard work to overcome a lack of formal education or familial support worthy of a 19th-century novel.

The greatly shortened version is that he initially studied under a silver smith in Utica, in up-state New York, decided he would teach himself engraving, moved first to Savannah and then left for Charleston, S. C. after the great Savannah fire destroyed his workshop. In Charleston he met his wife, Lavinia Dorothy Simons. In 1820 they were married and in 1823 they moved to New York City.*

Once in the city he partnered with another talented engraver, Asher Durand, and Durand’s older brother to form Durand and Wright. Working together for four years, from 1823-1827 they became important bank note engravers.
Wright was a talented medalist (sculptor of medals and medallions), engraver and a die-sinker, the person who carves the dies used to make coins. Some consider him the premier American medalist as all of his training was in the US or self-taught. This 1848 medal commemorating Zachery Taylor’s victory over the Mexicans at Buena Vista is a good example of his work.

Wright was also active in the artistic community in New York City. He and Durand, along with Samuel F.B. Morse (of Morse Code fame), Rembradt Peale, Thomas Cole, and others were in the group of young and talented artists who broke away from the American Academy of Fine Arts to eventually form the National Academy of Design, an influential honorary society of artists that is active to this day as the National Academy Museum and School.
Through his work with the Academy he became friends with the well-known chemist James Mapes (father of the author Mary Mapes Dodge). Through Mapes, Wright came to know another chemist who had turned into an ink manufacturer, Thaddeus Davids. Davids had been making ink since 1825 and continued until 1889.

Davids introduced Wright to the prosperous stationer David Felt. (see my post on the 1830’s when Felt had a short-run try at making his own steel pens under the name of Stationer’s Hall Pens.) For a time Wright was given a space in Felt’s workshops at 34 Wall St. to engrave seals for wealthy clients and make engraved plates to make custom labels. The fancier the engraving on a label, the harder it was to counterfeit. Monograms and seals were all the rage at the time, and Wright’s work was well-received.

1840 ad for David Felt advertising Wright’s medallion stamps.

In 1842, James Mapes’ son, Charles Mapes, joined with Charles Wright and Joseph C. Barnet and together they formed a company for making steel pens. It is not unlikely that they may have started with David Felt’s old pen making equipment as we no longer find references to Stationer Hall pens by that point, and there’s no record of Felt selling his equipment before this time. I’m sure however they started, with Wright’s abilities as a die sinker and engraver, they soon made their own dies and they began making pens under the name of C. C. Wright & Co.

C. C. Wright pens were well-received and consistently won top place in the American Institute’s fairs in New York City. (with poor Josiah Hayden’s pens coming in second every year they competed together)

They soon were offering a wide variety of pen shapes and types with over a dozen offered in 1844. They seem to have targeted especially businesses (like banking), and schools.

His ads are often filled with testimonials about the quality of his pens from newspapers to whom he would send samples, from famous penmanship teachers, and from business folks.

And in 1842, the same year they started making pens, C. C. Wright & Co. submitted a proposal to provide pens to the Treasury Department. Some of the references they used to get the attention of the Treasury Dept. included Judge Tallmudge, the city Recorder at the time, and “Professor [James] Mapes” who was to be in Washington DC and was going to drop off a few samples. The other references were W[illiam]. H. Cary & Co, importers of fancy goods, and Russell, Mattison and Taylor, one of the largest button manufacturers in NYC.
In the proposal to the Treasury, they offered the following pens at the following prices. Pens on cards were provided at a dozen per card, a dozen cards per gross.
On Cards
1. Imitation of the Perrian Pen – $2.75/gross
2. Columbian Eagle Pen – $3.00/gross
3. National Pen – $2.00/gross
4. Naval Pen – $2.00/gross
5. Elastic Pen – $1.80/gross
6. Knickerbocker Pen – $1.75/gross
7. Merchant’s Pen – $1.60/gross
In Boxes
1. School Pens – 75 cents/gross
2. Fine office pens, No. 1 – 87 ½ cents/gross
3. Fine office pens No. 2 – 75 cents/gross
4. Columbian Eagle Pens with holders – $2.50/gross
5. Imitation of Misely’s Pen (possibly Mosely’s pen?) – 50 cents/gross [link]
6. (late Hotchkiss and Co’s) pen – 87 ½ cents/gross
Holders and Handles were also to be provided. At $1.75 and $1.60 per gross respectively.

Wright continued to do engraving and medallions while also making money from his pens. An example from this time is this wonderful advertising note for his pens. (That’s Lafayette on the right) (image courtesy of the New York Historical Society)*

In early 1847 Charles Wright sold his business for a “tidy sum” which allowed him to focus full-time on his medals and other engraving projects.

Unfortunately, Charles Wright died in 1854 at the relatively young age of 59.

There are three major questions still to be answered related to Wright’s time as a pen maker:

Where did he get the tools for making pens? The story that’s been passed down says that while at David Felt’s he saw first-hand the difficulties Felt had in importing British pens. I suspect it was more that he saw a wide variety of pens and realized that with the right tooling it was fairly easy to make pens, and his knowledge of steel and its properties could come in handy. At the time there, again, weren’t many American manufactures. Atwood was out before 1841, and Hayden was just getting started, as was Mark Levy and Rhodes & Sons. Felt could haven advised him that this was a way to make some money, which Wright was in need of.
To whom did Wright sell the pen making equipment and the business? I doubt the machines just disappeared. If he sold the business for a “tidy sum” then someone bought the assets and most likely began making pens. A likely candidate has yet to materialize out of a few possible options.
What did a C.C. Wright pens look like? Obviously some were imitations of other pens, but none have been found as far as I can tell. If anyone finds one or a picture of one, let me know. More people than just I would be interested.

The 1840’s are shaping up to be an interesting decade. You start to have more serious artisans and industrialists trying their hand at pen making. It’s no long the inventor like Atwood, or stationer seeing if it’s cheaper to make than to buy, like Felt.

This sets us up for a whole different breed of professional pen makers to come along in the 1850’s and 1860’s.

* Many thanks go to Neil Musante, whose article in the Summer, 2014 issue of the MCA Advisory, the magazine for the Medal Collectors of America, was a source of tremendous help in the writing of this post, as was the personal correspondence with Mr. Musante who was generosity itself with his knowledge and help. Also, credit to the New York Historical Society who owns the amazing advertising note above.

November 21, 2017November 13, 2018

Pen History, the 1840’s: Josiah Hayden

Josiah H. Hayden was born 15 August 1802, son of Josiah Hayden Jr. (1768-1847) and Esther Hayden (1769-1862). He was born in upstate New York while his father, originally from Williamsburg, Massachusetts, was busing harvesting potash and preaching to the local Native American tribes*. When Josiah was still young they moved back to Williamsburg where Josiah and his older brother Joel became industrialists and entrepreneurs in the typical mold of the mid-19th-century: ambitious, hard-working, innovative, dedicated to their community and causes, and successful by moving with the times and adapting to new markets.

They started out in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, a small town in Hampshire County in the western part of the state. The town is built along the Mill River which served as a source of power for several of the local industrial operations over the years.

In 1809 Josiah’s uncles, Daniel and David Hayden opened up the first cotton mill in Western Massachusetts. The mill was profitable through the War of 1812, but was later abandoned as the price of cotton fell and larger mills were built elsewhere that could produce more cotton thread more cheaply. The mill sat empty from 1818 until 1822 when Joel Hayden and James Congdon purchased the property, rebuilt the dam, dug a canal and started making power-looms for weaving broadcloth. In 1827, Congdon withdrew from the business and Joel was joined by his younger brother Josiah.

In 1831, Joel and Josiah began moving away from the door locks and harness trimmings they had been making after the looms became obsolete, to make japanned buttons, tin buttons, button-molds and metal-shanked lasting buttons. Buttons were a big item in a day when shoes, dresses, suits, pants, and pretty much everything else were held together with buttons. Unfortunately, in 1832, early on a Sunday morning in November, the factory building was completely destroyed by fire. Fortunately, they were insured for $2500.

The next Spring the brothers began to rebuild. The new building was three stories, and measured 64 feet by 32 feet. Later they added two wings of two-stories each making it 104-feet total in length. Upon reopening, though, the two brothers split their business in two different operations.

Joel began experimenting with improvements on the metal-shanked lasting button and eventually came up with a design for the first flexible-shanked lasting button made in the US. These would naturally replace the sewn buttons made by Mr. Williston of nearby Easthampton, so Hayden and Williston entered into business together and eventually employed about 200 people, mostly women. In 1848, Williston bought out Joel Hayden and moved the button making to Easthampton, but by then, Hayden was on to other things. Joel eventually ran a larger cotton mill with 400 spindles, made door locks in another foundry, and eventually became quite successful, and rich, making brass plumbing fittings.

When the button factory was rebuilt in 1832, and Joel went off to invent the flexible-shaft lasting buttons, Josiah continued making japanned buttons and button-molds. Metal button making at the time used a lot of similar equipment to making steel pens. You have to prepare the metal, often with furnaces and rollers. You need presses to impress designs and shape the sheet metal, ways to polish and finish the items, and then operations to box and ship them.

While continuing the button business, which was consistent, but probably not terribly exciting, Josiah decided to branch out into making these new, hot items, steel pens. In 1839 he brought in Andrew Adams, of Middletown, Connecticut as foreman and began to make steel pens in a part of the button factory. Josiah Hayden was personally connected with the business until 1845 when he sold the steel pen business to the brothers Williston and William Ezra Thayer, who moved the business to Williamsburg village. I’ve found one reference saying that the Thayers continued making pens until 1856 and in the Massachusetts Register for 1852, under Hardware, you find this entry which is additional evidence that steel pens were still being made in western Massachusetts.

What these pens were called, is still unknown. They may have continued the Hayden brand, but you don’t find any references to them after 1844. It looks like yet another mystery still to be solved.

Hayden Premium Pens

From the beginning, Hayden was not out to innovate with his steel pens, but to imitate. He took as his model the very successful pens from James Perry. They were even labeled as American Perryan Pens.

While they may have been unoriginal in shape and finish, that is not to say they weren’t good quality pens. As proof, Josiah entered the pens into the annual fair of manufactured goods held by the American Institute in New York City.

In his first year, 1841, Hayden received a silver medal, and seems to have been the only steel pen to be awarded a prize. But starting in 1842, the first year his new rival, C. C. Wright, entered, poor Josiah Hayden was fated to come in second every other year he submitted an entry, in 1842, 1843 and 1844.

Josiah also opened up an agency at 5 Platt St. in New York City with his younger brother Philanthropus “Peter” Hayden to sell and distribute the pens.

Josiah stayed in Haydenville, as that part of outer Williamsburg had become known, while Peter was in New York.

“The Haydens were recognized as the leaders in every important business.”

The Hayden brothers were significant in their community not just as rich industrial powers, but also as dynamic and contributing members of their society. Josiah Hayden was a lay preacher in the local Methodist community and he and Joel were instrumental in the building of the Methodist church. Joel and Josiah were especially active in the abolitionist movement and Josiah is recorded on a petition to the US House of Representatives as “Josiah Hayden and 35 other citizens of Williamsburg, Massachusetts” objecting to the admittance of Texas into the Union as a slave state.

In 1838, the community of Haydenville was formed and got its first post office. Josiah Hayden was its first post master. Joel and Josiah also donated the land in Haydenville for the Haydenville Cemetary and the first person buried there was their father, Josiah Hayden, Jr.. Joel and Josiah also built houses next to each other, across from the factory. These are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In addition to their industrial pursuits, the Hayden brothers invested in many other side businesses in the area. In 1838, Joel and Josiah opened a general store, mainly catering to their workmen. They operated this for five years doing a business of $25,000 a year. They ran the store for a while before selling out. Josiah came back to it in later years, running the store for a couple of years with his partner Sereno Kingsley after another owner died. And In 1846 Josiah joined with two other wealthy gentlemen to found a bank in nearby Northampton. Joel was active as a Director on the board of a local railroad and his influence was seen as important in the town being connected to and given a stop on that railroad.

Joel went on to become active in local politics before expanding his sphere of influence in later years eventually becoming Lt. Governor of Massachusetts from 1863-1866, during the whole of the Civil War.

Josiah’s Golden Pens

As a side note, I also wanted to mention another pen-related phase of Josiah Hayden’s amazing life. After Josiah sold off his steel pen business to the Thayer brothers, he joined with Rollin L. Dawson of Syracuse, N.Y. and began to make gold pens at the old steel pen factory. He continued this until 1848 when he sold the business to Dawson and two locals who had worked with him in his various businesses.

Dawson, Warren & Hyde manufactured gold pens and eventually pen and pencil cases, pen holders and fine jewelry from 1848 until at least the 1860’s. In 1855, Massachusetts took inventory of the various industries doing business in the state. In Boston there were two gold pen manufacturers and the previous year they had made 6,500 pens with a capital investment of $3,500 and employed 6 people.

Dawson, Warren & Hyde, on the other hand, way out in the wilds of western Massachusetts, that same year, made 80,000 gold pens, using a capital investment of $25,000, employed 13 men and 12 women. Their gold and silver pencil case business manufactured 40,000 items, captial of $12,000, and employed 24 men and 11 women. And their steel penholder business made 6,000 gross penholders with a smaller capitalization of $3,000 and employed 4 people, 2 men and 2 women.

Here’s a Dawson, Warren & Hyde gold pen holder and pen. Picture is courtesy of the Williamsburg Historical Society, Ralmon Black, Secretary.

Epilogue

Josiah Hayden went on to dabble in various businesses in New York and Ohio, while Joel stayed in Haydenville. The Haydenville Manufacturing Co. continued even after Joel’s death in 1873 and a devastating flood in 1874 that destroyed the original factory and much of the town.

The factory was rebuilt in 1876 and continued in operation as a brass works into the 1950’s when it was purchased by the Sterling Faucent Company who operated it for a few years before closing it.

Today, the Haydenville Historic District encompasses the old Brass Works factory, the Hayden homes, the Congregationalist Church, the old school and several other buildings in a delightful slice of a 19th-century industrial community. You can find Greek Revival, Gothic Revival and Italianate styles of architecture in the several buildings. The historic factory has been restored and houses offices, studies and, for a short time, the Hilltown Cooperative Charter School.

Post script

Hayden pens never made a major impact on the history of steel pens in America. They were one of the top American pens of their day, so in that respect they helped set a higher standard for American-made, but they were short-lived and soon forgotten. They’re never mentioned in any of the subsequent histories written not even 40 years later, but that does not mean their impact was as soon lost. While Josiah Hayden didn’t make pens for long, his operations did live on past his interest, in the form of the elusive Thayer brothers, and then the gold pens of Dawson, Warren & Hyde.

Josiah Hayden and his brother Joel are also wonderful examples of the better kind of early industrialists and important parts of the story of the building of America. It is forgotten makers like them that have inspired me to write this blog, to try and recapture some of the lost history of one small part of American industry.

Credits

Much of the general history comes from two sources:

History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. vol. 1
Mr. Ralmon Black, the Secretary of the Williamsburg Historical Society, without whose very generous help I could not have filled out much of this story. Local historians are amazing resources whose passion and commitment to keeping alive the stories of their communities is the true preservative of our common history.

Unless otherwise attributed, any facts come from one of these two sources, and sometimes both. Birth and death dates are from birth and death records found on Ancestry.com Any mistakes or omissions are mine alone.

November 18, 2017October 16, 2018

Pen History: The Early Years – 1840’s, the Rise of the Americans

In the previous entries on pen history, the British manufacturers played a dominant role in the steel pen industry. Up through the 1830’s the Americans were minor players in many things, not just making steel pens.

At the beginning of the decade, the United States of America was still a fairly young country. The last signer of the Declaration of Independence to die, Charles Carroll, had only died in 1832. In 1840, there were only 26 states in the Union, with Michigan being the latest formed, in 1837. The formal border between Canada and the US wasn’t formalized until 1842. It wasn’t until the middle of the century that “base ball” is mentioned for the first time in print,

and Frederick Douglass publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

The 1840’s saw a young country begin to grow into its power and geographic size. It saw the first travelers cross the Oregon trail, the evocation of Manifest Destiny, and the war with Mexico. The first adhesive postage stamp, the discovery of gold in California, and the invention of the first sewing machine by Elias Howe also show the inventiveness, energy and potential of this new nation.

By 1850 multiple makers competed in a very new, extremely rapidly growing market.

The 1840’s also saw a mini-explosion of new American steel pen manufacturers and sellers, as the techniques from Birmingham made their way across the Atlantic, machinery and tool making expertise was refined and began to spread outside the major industrial centers, and the demand for steel pens (predominantly British) began to rise at the same time as nativist feelings towards “buying american” rose as well.

Charles Atwood moves on to other pursuits after 1840, but several other new-comers step in to fill the void.

Some are short-lived, like Mark Levy, some keep going for over a decade (Myer Phineas). We have stationers who make pens, like Mark Levy and Myer Phineas, as well as inventors, artists and industrialists like C. C. Wright and Jodiah Hayden. We also have a rather strange anomoly, an American-based maker of British pens (Herts & Sons).

Instead of trying to write a single, very long post to cover everything, I’ll break up these makers into individual posts so as to be able to deal with them as best I can. I’ll ensure this list is turned into a list of links as these posts go up, so if you want to find one of them, you can get there from here.

November 14, 2017October 16, 2018

A Gold, Oblique, Nib for Spencerian Writing – Piquette of Detroit

While it’s not made of steel, I felt a pen I recently acquired was interesting enough to add to the blog. It is a gold dip pen (just the nib and collar, the wood or MOP handle is gone) with what looks like the original box.

Let’s start with what can be known before we move into speculation.

The easy part is that this is a gold pen made/sold by Piquette of Detroit.

Charles Piquette was a jeweler who was in business from 1845 until 1860 or so.

1845 ad

I know Piquette is no long in the business because by 1861 Charles Dunks was calling himself “successor to C. Piquette” and listing the same Jefferson Ave. address. It seems he took over Piquette’s business.

The nib may well have been made by Dunks as there’s some evidence that Dunks was Piquette’s pen maker. This comes from a claim that the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation was made and donated by Dunks right after Lincoln’s election. Lincoln also used it to write his first inaugural address.

Piquette made gold pens and ran a re-tipping service ($0.50 for pointed pens, $0.75 for engrossing, i.e. stub or italic, nibs) out of his jewelry store in Detroit.

My pen is an oblique nib very similar in design to the 1831 Mordan patent for the first oblique nib. It is well-tipped and in great shape. Those are not cracks, but dried ink.

This imprint “Spencerian Pen” is the main puzzle about this pen.

During the time when this pen was most likely made, 1845-1860, Platt Rogers Spencer was actively getting his idea for business colleges off the ground, and publishing his first books of penmanship, explaining his methods and style (1848).

Most of the Spencerian pens we know of today were made by The Spencerian Steel Pen Co. which was founded by NY publisher and bookseller Ivison Phinney around 1858. Their pens were made by Josiah Mason, as provided by Perry, until very late in their production. I don’t see this nib as having any relationship to that company at all.

The fact that it’s marked “Spencerian Pen“, singular, not “Pens” plural, makes me think this was an imprint to indicate that this pen was good for Spencerian writing, rather than any officially marketed pen. It’s like the later steel pens which were marked as appropriate for Vertical or Modified Slant styles of penmanship, but this one is for Spencerian, the popular style at the time.

I don’t know a lot about gold pens, but it is my understanding that oblique gold pens are fairly rare, and Piquette pens are not too common, and then to find on top of those aspects, a pen marked as good for Spencerian penmanship from the time when Platt Rogers Spencer Sr. was still active, makes this a rather special pen after all.

I’d love to hear if others have seen anything like this, or have pens from this time, gold or otherwise, marked for Spencerian writing.

November 13, 2017October 16, 2018

Pen History: The Early Years – 1830’s, the British Invasion

It was in the 1830’s that things really start to cook. In 1830 we have Perry’s first pen patent, in 1831, Sampson Morden and William Brockeden invent the oblique pen and pen holder, also in 1831 is Gillott’s first pen patent, and in 1832 we find Perry’s second patent, the origin of the Perryan Double Patent Pen. Altogether, there are 16 British patents related to pens and pen holders in the 1830’s as opposed to only 2 in the 1820’s, one of which was for an inkstand.

By 1831, Perry is already shipping pens to the US.

12 1/4 cents ($1.47 per dozen) is a lot less than Williamson’s 100 cents per pen of just 20 years before. Prices are starting to come down, but they have a long way to go before they reach true mass-production levels. By 1843, the large stationer David Felt is selling his high-end pens for $1.50 per gross, the cheap ones go for 1 shilling (about 60-cents at the time) per gross.

In 1832 we see Gillott start advertising in the prestigious Times of London. This December 11th ad also announces his move to a much larger factory space at 59 Newhall St. in Birmingham.

Richard Mosley is an interesting character because in the next decade we begin to see him selling pens branded with his own name. It’s not clear if he’s making his own, or having one of the Birmingham makers do it for him as a custom imprint. This is a practice that lasts as long as steel pens are made and one that makes research into actual makers a challenge.

This issue of stationers and other merchants paying a pen manufacturer to make pens with their name on it goes back to practically the very beginning of the post-craftsman era. Was not Josiah Mason making pens for Perry with Perry’s name on them? Perry stopped making his own pens after 1829, and was solely concerned with design, and marketing.

This starts to really become a problem in this decade of the 1830’s as the number of names on pens starts to grow. It’s not always clear who is making the pens, and who is merely marketing them. John Mitchell made some pens for Gillott, Mason was making all the pens for Perry, and so on.

There were a number of new, smaller makers, but it sometimes becomes a challenge to untangle maker from seller unless we can find written statements of someone being a “maker” or “Manufacturer.”

As I mentioned above, the number of names on pens starts to drastically increase in the 1830’s. Only looking at pens sold in the US, in the 1820’s I’ve found evidence of five different brands of steel pen being sold. In the 1830’s that jumps to 17.

The British

British names being sold in the US include,

Deane’s
Gillott
Harwood
Heeley Radiographic
John Mitchell
William Mitchell
Knight
Perry
Sampson Mordan
Sheldon
Skinner
Warren
Williams
Windle’s

Of these, Windle’s were probably Gillott pens; Windle is identified as just a merchant in the patent he and Gillott share. But this is only a guess on my part.

Heeley was also a large purveyor of luxury goods, and most likely had his pens made by Josiah Mason. It was Heeley, after all, who had befriended the young Mason and introduced him to to his mentor Harrison.

A few of the remaining may be merchants and not manufacturers themselves, but it’s not always either easy to tell, nor is it cut and dried. Sampson Mordan, for example, was a merchant and purveyor of luxury goods like silver card cases and perfume bottles, but he was also an inventor and manufacturer as well.

Sampson Mordan

In 1822, Sampson Morden and an engineer John Isaac Hawkins, were granted a patent. This patent describes not only a way to encase a pencil or crayon in a tube, which became one of the first successful mechanical pencils, it also includes a description of pens made of tortoiseshell or horn whose tips are embedded with “larger pieces of diamond, ruby, gold or other hard substances.” While the shell or horn was soft, they would also embed in them small slips of gold to help stiffen and strengthen the primary substance. These were not, as you can imagine, inexpensive.

Mordan’s company made these composite pens for a while but they were rather fragile, and the tips came off pretty easily, which rendered them useless. But Mordan was not finished looking for alternatives to quill pens.

As I’ve mentioned before, he and William Brockeden, a painter and inventor in his own right, invented the first oblique nib as well as the oblique pen holder, with the patent granted in 1831. These were sold quite successfully, and were quickly copied as soon as the original patent ran out. But Mordan was not content to stop there.

In the early 1830’s, a watchmaker from London, James Gowland, created a way to pierce a steel pen and bend the resulting slip of steel back around to create a type of reservoir which could hold more ink in a single dip than a regular pen. This design may have been the very first such reservoir pen ever made.

It seems that there were some issues with his early design that prevented it from being manufactured easily, i.e cost effectively. Mordan, upon being shown the design, developed some improvements which allowed for mass-production at an economical price, and Mordan then patented those improvements and began selling his Triple Point Pens, and his Counter Oblique nib (an improved oblique nib with reservoir, see figures 3 in the picture blow).

This caused a small kerfuffle with an anonymous letter written to the editor of the Annual Register of Popular Inventions accusing Mordan of stealing Gowland’s invention. The author, who signs the letter “Scrutitor (pro bono publico)” strongly implies he is not connected with Gowland, but is instead attempting to stand up for the inventor against a mighty giant like Mordan, for “the public good.”

A long and detailed answer to this letter was published in a later issue from William Baddeley of London, a prominent inventor in his own right, who spoke with some authority as one of the folks involved in negotiating the connection between Gowland and Mordan. Baddeley points out that Mordan’s patent is for improved methods to MAKE the pens, in other words, manufacturing methods, that made the pens commercially viable and that Mordan is not actually stealing Gowland’s invention but instead is working with the original inventor to make these new pens.

As you can see from the diagrams, the slit of steel punched out is bent over top of the nib. This is the earliest example I’ve found of a reservoir nib, but far from the last.

As a note of side interest, in the article it mentions that the Nib #2 is what is known as a Lunar pen, so when one reads of Sheldon’s semi-lunar pens, also made in the 1830’s, you have an idea of the shape

The Americans

In the 1830’s the American market was only starting to wake up to the promise of steel pens. Peregrine Williamson was no longer producing, but even he saw the potential and he made some noises of coming back into the pen business in 1835, there’s no evidence he ever did.

Instead, I find two identifiable Americans advertising their pens in the 1830’s. One was a stationer, and one a true, Yankee inventor. (there are other names that pop up, like Davis & Co. in the ad at the top of the post, but it’s not clear if they’re British, American, a Stationer, an alternative brand of a known maker, or what. So, there are still more out there to be discovered, but this is what we’ve got for now)

David Felt and Stationer’s Hall

David Felt was a major stationer and blank-book maker in Boston from about 1815 until he expanded (and eventually moved) to New York City in 1825. His named his offices at 245 Pearl after the famed Stationer’s Hall in London, home to The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers. (the guild of stationers and book and newspaper printers)

He made a lot of his own paper goods, like blank books (ledgers, journals, etc…) and playing cards. He first had a factory in Boston, and then moved it to New York City. When he needed to grow out of that, he expanded and moved to Brooklyn, on Front St. between Adams and Pearl, right where one of the piers of the Brooklyn Bridge stands today. Later, in 1844, his business was growing so fast he looked for land in New Jersey to open a second factory. This became a factory town, Feltville. He eventually sold this property around 1865 as he retired after 50 years in the stationery business.

David Felt was a large and successful business man. He jumped on the steel pen trade in the 1820’s. By 1839 he was selling his own line of Stationer’s Hall pens. It’s not clear if he was making them in his Brooklyn workshop, or if he had them imported from a British house with his own imprint. He did sell a great deal of British stationery and fancy goods, but then he made a lot of his own materials and so he had mechanics and tool makers who could have created his own machines to make his own pens.

Charles Atwood

Atwood pens pop up from the early-to-mid 1830’s up through 1840. While Atwood made his office in the stationery hub, New York City, he began a bit further north in Massachusetts. Much of the following history is from an 1880 history of the old town of Derby, Ct. where Atwood had a factory for a while.

Charles Atwood was born in 1801 in Hardwick, Massachusetts, but the family soon moved to Salem, NY. His father was in the woolen cloth trade, which Charles learned until the age of 19. His formal education was scarce, but his desire to learn, it is said, was prodigious, especially math. This skill with numbers served him well in later years where he was known for great accuracy in his engineering. “So skillful was he in Arithmetic that he could solve many problems which are usually solved by Algebra, of which study he knew nothing.”

When he was 19 he began working for a Giles Tincker of North Adams, Mass. at a woolen mill. During his two years there, he invented a better means to remove wool from the carding machine, called the double doffer. Even though he was granted a patent in 1830 for this discovery, he was never in a position to protect his patent so he lost all benefit from it.

Not happy with this situation, he left the wool trade and instead saw steel pens as an interesting problem and a growing market. He had married Lydia Crosby and around 1832 or 1833 he invented a new way of making steel pens. He had no actual knowledge of how they were made in England, so he invented his own, reverse engineering, so to speak. There is some evidence that his rather extraordinary wife Lydia, may have played a larger role in the invention than is normally granted by the 19th-century historians. According to the book Mothers and Daughters of Invention, “Lydia was surrounded by inventors. Several of her Hotchkiss ancestors, her first husband Orrin Crosby, her second husband Charles Atwood, and her son-in-law George Kellogg were all inventors.”

Charles’ initial manufacturing operation was rather modest.

In a little shop at Middletown [Connecticut], his machinery was driven by one horse, and continuing the manufacture of pens a few years, he came to Birmingham, and carried on the same business in the large building now owned and occupied by Summers & Lewis. This building he erected and it was long known as “Atwood’s Factory.”

In 1834, his pens were awarded a Diploma at the American Institute’s fair in New York City. This was also the fair where Goodyear displayed samples of India Rubber. Atwood’s pens were displayed under the category of “Cutlery, Edge Tools and Hardware” as there was no category, yet, for steel pens.

An 1834 ad for Atwood’s pens appearing in The Evening Post (of New York)

In 1835 he entered his pens in the first annual fair of the Mechanics’ Institute on New York City. His pens were described as “very good of style and execution” and were awarded a diploma.

By 1836 Charles had an office at 72 Maiden Lane where he stayed until at least 1840, after which no trace of his pen making can be found.

By that point he had moved on to another invention, a new way to making hooks and eyes for clothing and sewing them onto cards. After he was able to sell that patent (he’s getting smarter), he moved on to inventing and patenting a machine for making various kinds of specialized chains. And then a machine for making pins that even in 1880 was still so fully used by the industry it was called an “Atwood machine.” He finally died at the young age of 53 from a congestive fever after a life of invention and innovation.

The 1830’s innovation and expansion was primarily on the eastern side of the Atlantic. (the indomitable Charles Atwood as the main exception) Patents, new factories, wider markets, all saw the British steel pen trade, especially in Birmingham, explode.

In the 1840’s, the American entrepreneurs begin to respond and a new crop of manufacturer begin to come forth. But that’s for next time.

November 9, 2017October 18, 2018

Pen History: The Early Years – 1820’s, Foundations Laid

From about 1805 until about 1820 there were only a few people making and selling pens, with Williamson and Wise being the largest and widest distributed. There may have been others who made pens still on the craftsman scale and sold locally, but they’re less visible from this distance.

All of that changed in the 1820’s. This is the time when the British, and especially in Birmingham, introduced mass production methods, and consistency of quality to leave the craftsman’s workshop behind and become a true industry.

There are several major names which first appear in this period, including James Perry, Josiah Mason, John and William Mitchell, and Joseph Gillott. These were not the only makers in the 1820’s, but they were the foundational innovators and inventors who took a craft and turned it into an industry. These folks also have the most written about them. For a fuller account, visit the Birmingham Pen Museum and/or get yourself a copy of People, Pens and Production (PPP)*, a book of essays about the rise and history of Birmingham’s pen trade. Because there is more information available elsewhere, I’ll only cover an outline of the period to give you an idea of how this all started. Much of the information below comes from this interesting book.

Throughout the 18-‘teens, Wise was making his barrel pens and selling them throughout England as well as America. He continued doing this well into the 1820’s. But he was soon to have competition.

Ad from 1827 for a NY Stationer

By 1820 James Perry was making pens in Manchester. He soon moved to London and became known for his inventive marketing and variety of pens. He was successfully making pens and selling them widely in 1828 when Josiah Mason, a small manufacturer of spit rings in Birmingham, sent him a few samples of an improved pen based on Perry’s own pens. Within a few days, Perry showed up in Mason’s workshop, in person, and hired him to start making the Perryan pens for the next 40 years.

Josiah Mason had been a hard-working entrepreneur from his childhood. When he was a young man he was introduced to Samuel Harrison, the split ring manufacturer who, in the 1790’s, had made pens for his friends, including the famous chemist Dr. Priestly. Harrison was impressed and not only hired Mason, but eventually chose him to take over his business. It was while Mason was successfully making his split rings (for key rings), and other steel “toys” (the term at the time for small buckles and other small, steel ornaments) when he saw some of Perry’s pens being sold in a stationer’s window. He purchased one and worked for a few weeks to see if he could make it better, especially focusing on better steel and manufacturing quality to improve flexibility. The results of these experiments set up Josiah Mason to be the maker of the famous Perryan Pens for decades to come before starting off on his own.

Mason’s factory eventually became the largest pen factory in the world, but before that could happen, a few other folks came along in the 1820’s to add their contribution to the industry.

The Mitchell Brothers (John and his younger brother William) seem to have been the first to really apply industrial practices and machines to the making of steel pens.

John started out making knife blades in 1820, and in 1822 he began inventing ways to apply machinery and other mechanical tools used to make metal buttons to the manufacturing of steel pens. “By applying the hand press to the processes of shaping, piercing and slitting pens he increased the rate of production, and cut costs. He also discovered a way of slitting steel pens after they had been tempered and hardened.” (PPP)

This application of machinery, especially the hand screw press, to the making of pens was the beginning of a real revolution in the availability, and especially the affordability, of steel pens.

When John Mitchell first began selling pens, his pens were 30s(hillings) a dozen. Within a few years, after the application of the machinery, the price fell to 1s 6d(pence) a gross.

John’s younger brother, William, worked with him for a while before setting out on his own and starting his own steel pen business. William eventually found great success and became one of the largest and most successful pen makers in the world.

In 1821, John and William’s sister Maria also began her entry in the steel pen trade by marrying a young man of Huguenot decent from Sheffield, Joseph Gillott.

Gillott had learned the trade of knife and scissor grinding in Sheffield, and brought that to Birmingham after the Sheffield cutlery trade took a downturn following the end of the Napoleonic wars. The stories of Gillott’s early years are numerous. He began making his own pens around 1827 in a crude workshop where he heated up the pens in a common frying pan over the kitchen fire. He quickly began to make money, and continued experimentation with the fineness and quality of steel, as well as adding the grinding of the nibs to increase flexibility. (An idea most likely arising from his days grinding scissors and knives as a young apprentice)

From these humble beginnings, Gillott went on to be one of the largest pen makers in the world, and many of his pens are considered the finest examples of the flexible pointed pen, and are highly valued by calligraphers to this day. But in the 1820’s, he was just getting started.

By 1820 in the United States, Peregrine Williamson seems to have lost interest in pens, leaving only Wise still advertising. These early British manufacturers hadn’t gotten to the point, yet, of shipping their wares to the poor, benighted savages in the former colonies in any great quantities. That is not to say people in the US weren’t using steel pens. You still find them being sold by stationers, like in this Chapman’s ad from 1829.

And in 1828, the US House of Representatives spent a whole $1.00 on steel pens, (compared to $1,359.27 on quills).

The full on assault by the Birmingham makers on the American market wasn’t to start until the 1830’s, and when it did, it combined with a series of other elements to create a whole new booming industry. And when you have a boom, there are always people who want to get a piece of that pie, and the number of manufacturers began to grow rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic.

* People, Pens & Production in Birmingham’s Steel Pen Trade, ed. by Brian Jones MBE, Brewin Books, 2013.

November 7, 2017October 16, 2018

Additional Evidence for Early Metal Pens

The reason I called the first period Pre-History in my original post dividing pen history into eras, was that most histories with names begin after this time. Before 1800, we have hints, rumors and names out of the mists of legend that have come down with not much evidence, and not much more than names, rough dates and maybe a place.

The stories that were written later in the 19th-century tell us that right around 1800 there is Thomas Sheldon, or perhaps it was a blacksmith from Sedgley called Daniel Fellows. Of course the French have Arnoux in the 1750’s whose invention was pretty well ignored in France but was stolen by the perfidious British and used for their own enrichment.

We do know that Sheldon was making pens in the early 1800’s. So was Wise, and Donkin, who had the first patent for a metallic pen in Britain in 1808. I have also dealt with Peregrine Williamson in America in a prior post. All of them were active in the 1800’s and some, like Wise kept working up through the ‘teens and into the 1820’s.

So far, many of these names come down to us through later stories and anecdotes. It’s rare to find something more substantial, especially anything from the 18th-century.

I’d like to add one more name to this list of early makers of metallic pens. I recently came across the names of E. and T. Williams, working in London in 1790.

NEW INVENTED GOLD, SILVER AND STEEL PENS

WARRANTED.

E. and T. Williams, No. 13, Strand, return their grateful thanks to the Nobility, Gentry, and the Public, who have approved and patronized their curious new invented Elastic Pens: respectfully inform them, that they have now, by great care and industry, brought them to the highest perfection; which, for finished workmanship, exactness of moulding, and extraordinary temperature, for durability, as infinitely to surpass every thing of the kind ever introduced in this kingdom.

They are fitted into ivory handles, plain, or inlaid, with a gold, silver, and steel Pen to each, or separate, with a pencil. – The steel points are preferred, and jetted over, which prevents their getting rusty. This is a valuable discovery, and a circumstance that has been long and universally complained of in the late ingenious Mr. Pinchbeck’s Steel Pens.

PORTABLE FOUNTAIN PENS, of the same quality, warranted to stand the test; the construction and finishing, being so compact and complete, as never can fail of answering the intended purposes, as proved by repeated trials.

I don’t have access to a lot of information on London at that time, so I have no more details of the interesting E. and T. Williams.

There was another advertisement from two years later in 1792 where they’re still “new invented.”

One interesting implication of these ads is the language implying that there are other steel pens (“unrivaled in this kingdom…), that ones made in the past would rust, which has “been long and universally complained of…” It also implies that the pens, most likely barrel pens, are fitted onto the handles in such a way as to allow them to be switched out. “New points may be fitted in at pleasure, and by this means will write for several years without repairing.”

E. and T. Williams are advertising improved articles that are already familiar to the buying public, both their advantages and their problems.

I did find in an 1808 city directory of London that there was an E. Williams, Bookseller and Stationer, at 11 Strand. Could be the same. Otherwise, this is what I’ve got. This and a series of ads following that include the phrase, “gold, silver and steel pens” being sold by other stationers and book makers, implying that perhaps they are selling Williams pens, or others have started to imitate them. Here’s one from 1796.

Again we see that to start a history of steel pens with Wise in 1803, let alone to start with Perry, Gillott and Mitchell in the 1820’s, is missing a “pre-history” that was real nonetheless. Rarely do these inventions just spring complete and original from the mind of a genius. This is the favored narrative in the 19th and for much of the 20th-century; the Great Man (because it’s always a man) theory of discovery and innovation.

The reality is that there’s almost always some foundations laid by others, early models and patterns upon which are drawn the inspirations for later developments.

Oh, and I need not mention the October 14, 1895 Harrisburg Daily panegyric for the recently deceased Richard Esterbrook (who started Esterbrook in 1860) that claimed for him the title of “the inventor of the steel pen”, is, shall we say, a bit off the mark.

November 2, 2017October 16, 2018

Peregrine Williamson: Inventor, Businessman, and Pioneer Pen Maker

In the last entry on pen history, I wrote briefly about The Craft Era. There were two main makers from that era: Wise of London, and Peregrine Williamson in Baltimore. I wanted to share a bit more about Williamson who was not only an early pioneer and innovator, he was most likely the first financially successful pen manufacturer anywhere.

Peregrine Williamson was born around 1770. In 1800 he was a working jeweler in Baltimore when, as the story goes, he made a steel pen for himself as he was having trouble cutting a quill to his own satisfaction.

At first, this tube-shaped steel pen suffered from the same stiffness that plagued other attempts at making a steel pen. Peregrine worked at fixing this and finally came upon a method of adding two additional slits, one on each side of the main slit. This increases the flexibility of the tines by, essentially, making the tines narrower, as well as moving the center of flex forward towards the end of the slit. With less steel to flex, it became easier to bend the tines.

Here’s a more modern version of the same side slit. There’s another one on the other side.

In 1809 he submitted a patent for this discovery. It was issued on 22 November 1810. Unfortunately, this patent disappeared with so many others in the 1835 fire. It is one of the missing “X” patents and was 1,168X. If anyone has seen this I, and the patent office, would love to see it as well.

By 1808 he was advertising his pens as the Williamson Patent Elastic Three Slit Pen. His early advertisements include excerpts from a letter from then President Thomas Jefferson, to whom Williamson had sent some sample pens. They also included an endorsement from Francis Foster, a writing master at St. Mary’s Catholic Seminary and College in Baltimore.

During the height of his production of these pens, their popularity ensured that he was busy enough to hire a journeyman assistant, and the business made a “clear $600 a month profit” according to an 1835 article in the Journal of Commerce out of New York City. (as quoted in full in the 22 May 1835 issue of The Evening Post (New York))

After several years of successful business, we had a bit of trouble with our friends across the Atlantic. In 1812 Peregrine Williamson enlisted in the 51^st Regiment of the Maryland Militia for the defense of Baltimore. He was present during the battle of North Point where the British landing to take Baltimore was eventually repelled, and then was also present for the next two days at Fort McHenry during the British bombardment, which inspired Francis Scott Key to pen the national anthem.

It’s not clear how long he made pens, but he may well have continued through the few years of the war. The latest ad I have found for his pens is from late 1813.

But at some point he did stop making pens. According to that same Journal of Commerce article, he kept making pens “until the demand, limited as it then was, becoming for the moment supplied, and his attention being attracted to some other object, the manufacture of pens was abandoned.”

At the time, the only real competition he had was from Jacob Wise of London. While Wise was much more ambitious in his marketing and reach, he seems to have not been as financially successful. According to an 1838 article in The Saturday Magazine,

The first mention that we find of steel pens for writing, is in 1803, when Mr. Wise constructed barrel-pens of steel, mounted in a bone case for convenience of carrying in the pocket. These pens were very dear, and produced to their inventor but a scanty income. For many years, however, Wise’s pens were the only steel pens that could be had, and by means of great activity in “pushing a sale” of them, they could be had at almost every stationer’s shop in the kingdom.

While Williamson seems to have left the pen trade sometime in the 18-teens or ’20’s, Wise continued to sell his barrel pens well into the 1820’s. An ad from a New York stationer in 1827:

Something else happened in the 1820’s, and that was the first blossoming of the British pen trade. One of the major innovations frequently attributed to the British at this time, was the three-slit pen for increased flexibility. Gillott’s 1831 patent lays claim to the invention of making the tines as straight, parallel strips of metal rather than sloping from the shoulder to the tip. This is accomplished via the two slits on the side, making them parallel to the main slit in the middle. In other words, he’s found a way of patenting the result of two slits parallel to the main slit, not the slits themselves. This wording may well have been one of the impetuses for the wide variety of side slits you begin to see, from “T” slits, “L” slits all the way up to outright cut-outs where the metal is taken away entirely at the sides.

Here’s a more modern pen (c. 1920’s) with the same kind of side slit as you found in 1830. As you can see, by separating it from the shoulder, it creates a straight tine with parallel sides. The slit is shown in the yellow oval, the tine is delineated by the rectangle.

This patent has led many to repeat this as fact, that the three tine pen was first made by Gillott after his 1831 patent. One example is found in the Wikipedia article on Gillott which states,

One great difficulty to be overcome was [the early steel pen’s] extreme hardness and stiffness; this was effected by making slits at the side in addition to the central one, which had previously been solely used. A further improvement, that of cross grinding the points, was subsequently adopted. The first gross of pens with three slits was sold for seven pounds.

But how do we account for Williamson’s advertising (and patenting) his “three slit pen” over 20 years before? Could this be a case of independent invention? Well, the Journal of Commerce certainly does not think so.

A sample of [Peregrine Williamson’s three slit] pens was sent out to England, and imitations soon came back, placarded with an Englishman’s name as the inventors, “by His Majesty’s Royal Patent.” The Englishman [Gillott] could not invent so much as a card even, but made almost a facsimile of Mr. Williamson’s. The same cards have been perpetuated to this day, and the business has been pursued by the English manufacturers, until more than a hundred tons of steel are now used annually in the manufacture of more than two hundred millions of pens, and the price is reduced to a few cents. The English manufactures, in the mean time, have realized immense fortunes by the invention, but have added nothing to the principles of Mr. Williamson, nor, after all their change of form, have they contrived anything better than his, or so good.

Well, if that isn’t throwing down the gauntlet at the esteemed Gillot, Perry, et. al. I am not sure what else would suffice for a challenge? He even goes after Gillott for using cards to package pens. It seems that Williamson sold his pens for $1.00 each or $9 for a card of a dozen. And indeed, pens were very often sold on a card containing a dozen pens in the early days of the 20’s and 30’s.

Unless we end up finding one of Mr. Williamson’s pens, or better illustrations of them, or a smoking-gun admission from Gillott’s private papers that he saw a three-slit pen from America before his patent, there’s no way to validate the truth of this provocative declaration. We do know the later part of the statement, decrying any innovation on the part of the British, to be false. They did introduce many improvements in manufacturing techniques which were primarily responsible for bring the price far below Williamson’s $1.00/pen. They also pioneered thinner and better quality steel with better tempering, as well as grinding nibs to increase flexibility. (most likely that last innovation belongs to Mr. Gillott who had begun his apprenticeship as a scissors grinder)

What we do know is that the three-slit pen was not a novel invention of the British. And there seems to be an indication that at least some of these American three-slit pens made their way to England before this invention was claimed on that side of the Atlantic. It is a not-unlikely possibility that this idea was at least started by Peregrine Williamson, even if it was taken further by the early pen makers of Birmingham.

An additional interesting twist to Peregrine Williamson’s career is when he decided to get back into the pen game around 1835. He filed another patent as an improvement over his old patent of 1810. This was issued in 30 March 1835 and is another of the lost “X” patents. It 8,735X.

This second patent, according to the Journal of Commerce, covered two innovations:

The first is a sliding clasp, which being moved up or down makes the pen more or less flexible, at the pleasure of the writer. The other is hardening the extreme of the nib [the very end of the tip] in the most extreme degree. By these two improvements which Mr. Williamson has or will secure, by patent, he hopes to clasp again the profits of his invention. We are now writing with one of his three-slit, sliding-clasp, diamond points, and it is certainly a very fine pen.

This idea of a sliding mechanism to adjust the flexibility of the nib also makes it over to England at least by the time of a British patent in 1856, #777, by Alexander Prince: “Improvements in steel pens for the regulating the elasticity thereof.”

The same concept even shows up later in fountain pens in the Eversharp Doric adjustable nib introduced in 1932.

Unfortunately, I’ve not seen any evidence that Mr. Williamson ever made any of these new pens, or started a new company, but the search continues.

Peregrine Williamson died in 1841 at the age of 71 of apoplexy.

For such an important, early figure, very little is actually known about him. He appears in no census data, very few directories, no genealogies. Very little is known about his personal life, where he was born or raised, or even how he made his pens. What we do know is that he was a true pioneer and innovator, and he can truly be said to be the first American steel pen manufacturer.

**Thanks go out to Mariam, a wonderful Reference Librarian at the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library at the New York Historical Society for her kind help and for finding Peregrine’s War of 1812 service and death notice.

October 27, 2017October 16, 2018

Origins of the Oblique Pen and Oblique Holder

I finally have an answer to a question that has puzzled me for a while: where did the oblique holder come from?

It’s obviously not a product of the era of the quill, so when did we first have nibs held at this odd, oblique angle? To answer this, you first you have to go back to the Early Years of the steel pen: 1820-1860.

Prior to this period, steel pens were almost universally all barrel pens affixed to a holder pretty permanently. Pens were also not really disposable. There were even steel pen repair services, just like the same services to repair your fine quills.

Individual slip nib pens which fit into a holder were originally pieces of a quill which came in a box of nibs and fit into a holder. These were disposable and meant to obviate the need to mend your quills.

By 1831 you did start to see more what they called “slip nib pens” or “portable pens” (easier to carry than a long barrel pen), but the idea of holding the nib at an oblique angle in the holder was an idea new enough it warranted a patent.

In 1831, an enterprising and very successful stationer and inventor, Sampson Mordan (inventor of the silver mechanical pencil) combined with one William Brockedon to patent the first oblique pen and oblique holder. (I’ve attached the patent below)

In the patent application they mention as the benefits that this will allow the writer to hold the pen more comfortably as well as it should allow the pen to last longer since both tines will be moving across the paper evenly. If you read the description, the idea of holding a pen obliquely seems to be a new idea, and one that requires explanation and justification, and the obliquity itself is patentable.

“and we hereby claim as our invention, the oblique direction or position purposely given to the slits of all pens, whether made of quills, metals, or other fit and proper materials, and also the obliquity produced in the use of common pens, whether made of quills, metals, or other fit and proper materials, when held in our oblique pen holders.”

The holders shown in the patent document include oblique nibs, as well as oblique holders with straight nibs. Figure 17 is explicitly labeled as “another pen holder adapted for holding common quill or metal portable pens [slip nib pens] in an oblique position”

Figures 26 and 27 show the oblique nib which was also covered under this patent.

The explicit language of this patent make it clear that the idea of holding a pen at an oblique angle is the central new idea of the patent. And thus with this we can finally point to the beginnings of the oblique holder and oblique pen.

One mystery solved, 10,473 more to go.

P.S.

Thanks go out to the owner of the Sampson Mordan site http://www.sampsonmordan.com/. I have found a number of the British patents related to steel pens, but have not been able to access any of their details. This wonderful person has posted some of Mordan’s patents and fortunately this was one of them. It helped me confirm what I suspected about oblique holders.

If you want to search more British patents, at least the names and patent numbers, I have the only list of indices I’ve found for the early patents (pre-1881). I had to gather them together and it’s still incomplete, and there are no details like the attached in these docs, but it’s a place to start.

If anyone has access to these pdf’s and would be willing to grab a few if I provided you with the numbers, I would be most appreciative. Thanks!

October 24, 2017October 16, 2018

Pen History: Prehistory and the Craft Era

In my post outlining the various era of steel pen history I name the first two as Prehistory and The Craft Era. In this post I’ll dispose of the first, and show how the second period, the Craft Era, lays the groundwork for the real explosion in pen production during the Early Years.

Prehistory

There are several key sources which have gathered together multiple references in past documents, letters, etc… that mention early example of metallic pens.

The most exhaustive I’ve found is the slim volume The Story of the Invention of Steel Pens by Henry Bore, Ivison, Blakeman and Co., New York, 1890. This wonderful booklet of 60 pages packs more history per page than many other works of that more verbose time. In pages 3 ’till about 15 (when he strays fully into the next era), Mr. Bore lists citation after citation of references to earlier metallic pens.

Another good source is an article from The Saturday Magazine from 1838. It’s a British magazine and written very soon after steel pens began to be industrially produced. The article is the second in a series on the History of Writing Materials. The first one was on the History of the Quill. The main one I will look at is on The History of Steel Pens. (there is a third section on the History of the Black-Lead Pencil, which some readers may find of interest, but I’m only dealing with the second section at this time.)

Basically, what these references all add up to is a picture of various people at various times imitating a writing pen, usually in a precious metal as a special one-off product. These seem to have been some variation of a barrel pen. Imagine a flat sheet of metal rolled into a tube and a pen point cut out of one end. This tube is mounted on a stick of some sort (wood, metal, whatever), and that is a barrel pen. These seem to usually be for nobility or special people like scientists or writers. These were specially created works from artists or craftsman.

The Craft Era

Where we start to see a transition is in the often-quoted story told by Josiah Mason who credits his mentor Harrison, with making a steel pen for the famous chemist Dr. Joseph Priestly (discovered oxygen, etc…) in the late 1780’s. This becomes a transition because this same Josiah Mason, in the 1820’s becomes one of the small group of major British men who turned one-off artisan pens into a valid industry, churning out high-quality pens using machines and mass-production methods.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves a little. What we start to see around 1780 are a few people experimenting with making steel pens as a possible livelihood. You have Harrison mentioned above. His technique was to roll a sheet of thin steel into a tube. The seam where the two side met he used as the slit, and then filed away the underside to make the shape of a pen. This was a highly laborious process.

There were others, such as a blacksmith named Fellows, of Sedgley (England) who in 1796 punched the shape out of a sheet of steel, wrapped the end into a tube and cut the slit with a chisel. Slight easier than Harrison, but still not fast enough.

These first steel pens were not only difficult to make, but users complained that they were stiff and scratchy. The steel was easily eaten away by the corrosive ink of the day. But it was the stiffness that really seemed to be a problem.

Quills can be flexible or they can be stiff. Swan quills, in particular, are big and thick and were known for stiffness. This was good for some kinds of writing, but much of the writing that was popular by the end of the 18th-century required a fine-point and a flexible tip. Someone needed to find a way to increase the flexibility of these early steel nibs before they could move from being a novelty to become a true commodity.

Despite the shortcomings, people were beginning to make and buy these early steel pens, primarily, it seems, in England. In 1806 Collins, Perkins & Co, a stationer in New York City, advertises that he has just received a shipment from London which includes “a large supply of steel pens.” Someone over there was making them and even exporting them. Could this have been Harrison? Fellows? Fellows’ former assistant Sheldon? Could it have been Wise of London with his “Elastic Steel Pens,” another barrel pen he began making in 1803?

Here’s an 1807 ad for Wise’s pens. Remember that spelling back then was more of a competitive sport than the set of standards it eventually became.

Right around this time, we find our first American pen maker, Peregrine Williamson. The story goes that in 1800 Williamson was a jeweler in Baltimore. He was having trouble mending his quill pens (this was a common problem, quills wore out quickly and most people were not very good at mending their quills), so, being a jeweler, he made himself a pen from steel instead. The first ones were too stiff, like the others being made at the time. Part of this was the thickness of the steel, but also the form of the barrel pen did not led itself to great flexibility.

He decided to make a few adjustments and thereby seems to be the first to add slits to each shoulder of the pen. (an innovation later claimed by the British, a claim unchallenged until now) This moved the focus of the tines’ flex further back on the pen and thus increased the flexibility of the tines. This became his Elastic Three Slit Metallic Pen. By 1808 he had moved to New York and set up a business making quite a good living for both himself and an assistant just making these improved steel pens. According to an article in the Boston Mechanic magazine for August, 1835, Peregrine Williamson was clearly a profit of $600/month with the work of himself and his assistant. He did sell his pens for 100-cents each, so they weren’t cheap. In 1814 that would be about $260,000 a month in today’s dollars in profit. Not bad.

(As an aside, the ad above Williamson’s was advertising the available work of an indentured servant who still had 8 more years to pay off his indenture. An interesting historical tidbit from the time.)

In 1809 Williamson took out his most ambitious ad to date. It is also one of, if not the first, example of a President of the United States being quoted in an advertisement. You can also see from the illustrations that these are also barrel pens affixed to a handle.

The “uniformity of their books” mentioned as an advantage of the steel pen over the quill comes from the fact that quill pens, especially if they are not mended by a professional, can vary quite extensively. This can lead to one pen writing broad, one fine, and thus an inconsistent look to your journals and accounts.

An interesting follow up to this story with President Jefferson is that in a letter of 1822, Jefferson is writing to his friend DeWitt Clinton in New York.

“I thank you, Dear Sir, for the elegant pens you have been so kind as to send me; they perform their office admirably. I had formerly got such from Baltimore, but they were of steel, and their points rusted off immediately.”

This indicates that Clinton had sent him most likely a gold pen, or at least one not made of steel, and that the former President had had trouble with the ink of the time corroding his steel pens too quickly.

By 1812 you no longer see ads for British steel pens as we were having a bit of a tiff with the island nation and goods were slow in getting here.

1813 ad for a whole host of stationery and fancy goods items, only mentions Williamson’s pens.

But later in the teens, Sheldon, the assistant of Fellows who had made barrel pens back in 1795 in Sedgley, began making his Sheldon’s Inimitable Elastic Semi Lunar Steel Pen. You also still had stationers advertising Williamson and Wise as the only named pens.

Various other mentions during this period in American advertisements shows that steel pens were becoming a standard item, even as quills were still the norm.

In 1811: advertisements for “English and American Steel Pens”
In 1812: “Best Dutch Quills, Crow Quills for Drawing. Ready made Pens, Patent and Steel Pens…”
1817: stationer advertising “patent steel pens”

Quills were still the primary writing instrument, though. In an 1820 advertisement for a Penmanship class, one of the skills being taught is “to make a good pen” i.e. cut a quill to make a good pen with which to write your new penmanship.

To this point in its history, the steel pens made by the above gentlemen were actually still pretty much hand-made objects. But the foundations are being laid for the true revolution in the pen industry which occurs in the next decade.

From 1820 to 1830 we see the introduction of machinery and eventually mass-production methods used to make steel pens, and they go from a luxury item to an everyday tool of the student, businessman and common writer.