Wednesday, September 14, 2016

A Missing Piece of the Ludden Story

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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A few months ago I was excited to write about an unusual patented pencil, which later unraveled the story of another obscure manufacturer, William (“Red-Legged Devil”) Ludden (see 
http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-red-legged-devil-or-is-it-devils.html):


I would have included this example, had I been organized enough to know that I had it at the time . . .


and educated enough to know what that WL-ish looking hallmark meant . . .


In fact, if I’d researched this one first, the Ludden connection would have been much more straightforward to find, because the patent date on this one, October 17, 1871, is a correct and direct reference to a William Ludden patent I didn’t mention in my previous articles, number 119,935, for a fairly conventional magic pencil:


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