McColm Stops the Presses

As October, 2013 drew to a close, I was starting to feel the weight of the world begin to lift – or at least the weight of the first volume of my patent book. I had examined thousands of patents one by one, carefully documenting each as I went in a spreadsheet. For several weeks my day job had been just the middle part of my day, my break in between the early morning and late night sessions of tedious database building and editing. Many days I spent more time working on the book than I did at the office – and I was spending full days at the office.

But with the most difficult and mind-numbing part of the process done, I was having fun writing the short stories which accompany the illustrations in the book. Light was beginning to show at the end of the tunnel, and Janet was relieved as I assured her the book would be done before the Ohio Pen Show in November (little did she or I know that work on Volume 2 would start after the new year).

It was during that time that Matt McColm sent me an email of a pencil he’d found in a coffee can full of Coors bottle openers (since Matt’s from Denver, that’s not much of a surprise – the Coors part anyway):

The Coors part might not have been a surprise, but you have to wonder what made an antique dealer think that’s where something like this belonged. "Hmm, here’s a pencil . . .looks really old, possibly gold, works good . . . beautiful mother of pearl . . . ah, I’ve got the perfect place for that in my display, in that coffee can over there with all those rusty old mid-century bottle openers." Really?? I like to think things like this look just a little more special than that, even to the untrained eye!

I shouldn’t complain. Matt knew something like this was right up my alley and the method to this particular dealer’s madness made it that much cheaper for him to snap it up for me. And with the draft of my book about done, I thought I’d show off a little bit and asked him if it had a patent date. It did:

"Fairchild / PL Pat. Mar.8.81." I flipped to the first section of the book, in which patents are organized by date, and thumbed to March of 1881, and . . . nothing. I didn’t have even a single patent listed for March 8, 1881. The light I had seen at the end of the tunnel suddenly looked so much farther away. How did I miss this one? And if I missed this one, how many others did I also miss? 

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3, 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.