It Would Have Been So Much Easier Had I Known This!

Sometimes you just know the answer is out there somewhere.  It has to be.  People didn’t just turn out these pencils by the hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands, work as hard as they could to sell them, and then vanish without a trace.

One of the shadowy figures I’ve been researching for years is Samuel Kanner, the assignee of the original patent (and inventor of the improved patent) for the “Presto” repeater pencils.  I even have his personal demonstrator Presto in my collection:

Doubtless it was Kanner behind the wheel, guiding his repeating pencils into the slimmer “Everfeeds” made by the Gilfred Corporation, eventually squaring off against Eversharp in the patent infringement case in which Gilfred claimed Eversharp stole his design for Eversharp’s repeating pencils (see “My Find of the Year” on December 31, 2011 at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-find-of-year.html):

From the top, that’s a later Presto, a Gilfred, an Everfeed, and an Eversharp Doric repeater.  Unfortunately for Kanner, Eversharp won the infringement case in 1942, convincing the judge that since the Kanner mechanism wasn’t significantly different from a repeating mechanism patented in the nineteenth century, Kanner’s patent was therefore invalid.

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.