Three Interesting Watermans - Part Three

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And what about that bottom one in this picture?

If Waterman dropped the metal tip from the Model 25 sometime after late 1924, what’s up with the extra long metal tip here?  Simple.  This isn’t a Model 25.  Note the two bands on the top cap, and a nose section which is markedly more slender:

The imprint adds further clues:

There’s our 1924 patent date, but added below the typical imprint is the stylized word “Ripple.”  The earliest reference I can find to Waterman’s use of the word “Ripple” in connection with what it previously called mottled hard rubber, was in this advertisement, from the Oakland (California) Tribune on February 16, 1926:

But one thing is missing from this advertisement: a picture of the pencil, which would tell us whether Waterman was introducing the longer, more graceful nose section or the stubbier version.  Later advertisements continue to show the stubbier tips:

At the end of 1928, when Waterman added colors to the Ripple lineup - blue, olive and pink - the advertisements continue to show a stubby tip  – with a metal tip, suggesting the colored ripple pencils took a slightly different evolutionary path than the model 25:

This advertisement, from December, 1928, shows a pencil which mostly matches the trim configuration on this pencil; but the nose remains stubby (assuming the artwork is correct):

And this one, from August, 1929, is fascinating: it touts that “nothing can take the place of rubber” scant months before the introduction of the celluloid Patrician line, and there’s our pencil – with a short and stubby nose, and not called a model 25.  The pen is a number 94, and the pencil is referred to in this ad as a number 95:

In December, 1930, this advertisement appeared in the Winnipeg Tribune, showing our pencil in its current incarnation, with the long, slender nose and two trim bands at the top end.  By this time, it was referred to as model 0727N (meaning this was now referred to as the model 27 - that's an 07 prefix denoting gold filled trim, an N to denote a narrow band):

Conservative to the end, Waterman continued to offer the “ripple rubber pencil” at least through 1933, when it last appeared in the company’s catalog (page from the Pen Collectors of America’s copy):

By this time, the “N” denoting a narrow band was dropped, suggesting that there was only one trim configuration still in production.