The Company I Misjudged

I don’t have any regrets about The Catalogue of American Mechanical Pencils. Of course I’ve learned a lot since the books was published that I wish was in there. Of course some of the things I thought at the time I wrote it have since proven not to be true. However, it was everything I knew in 2011.

One thing I thought I knew was that the Kemper Thomas Company of Cincinnati produced the Selfeed line of metal pencils. I had good reason to think that: the example I had with box and papers sure looked as if that was the case:

I did hedge my bet a little on this one – although I listed the Selfeed under Kemper Thomas at page 92, I indicated that "Kemper Thomas seems an unlikely source for an original pencil design." Why? Because Kemper Thomas was in the calendar and advertising business, not the pencil business.

With help from half a dozen or so people, I finally did learn that the "Selfeed Pencil Company" was a separate concern established to make pencils for the Wall-Stieh Company, and that Kemper Thomas had specially packaged pencils supplied to it for resale (the article was posted here a couple years ago at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/11/one-wild-goose-chase.html).

Even though the Selfeed wasn’t a Kemper Thomas original, it does distinguish the calendar company as one of the earliest of the general advertising companies to offer pencils under its own name  . .

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.