Wednesday, May 14, 2014

A funny thing happened on the way back to the blog . . .

When I went on break last October, I didn't really go on break.  I stopped posting here so that I could crank out a book on Writing Instrument Patents, because I was getting tired spending so much time rooting around for patents.  In December, I wrapped that up and introduced American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910 at the Philly show in January.

And so, one might reasonably asked, why didn't I get off my lazy butt and get back to this in January?

Because my own book was driving me nuts.  It stopped too early.

So while the snow flew and there wasn't much to do over the winter in Ohio, I wrote a second patent book.  This one covers 1911 to 1945.  Because so many more patents were issued during that time frame, in order to pack everything into this book I had to make it longer (376 pages), use fewer full page patent drawings (25 this time) and even shrink the text a bit to 9 point type.

The second volume follows the same format as Volume 1, with one improvement – the categories in the Patents by Description section are much more specific.  For example, nothing is identified just as a “fountain pen,” but by the specific  type of pen – lever fill, sleeve fill, etc.   Mechanical pencils are also broken down by screw drive, repeater, sliders and more.   An illustrated glossary at the beginning of the book explains how things are categorized.

I'm told the books will be ready in time for Raleigh on May 29, 2014.  To order, email me at jveley@jonathanveley.com.