Wahl, Sheaffer and the Race for Boston - Part One

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Note:  This article appeared in the Winter 2015 and Spring 2016 issues of The Pennant, and is being reproduced here as a five-part series.

How Wahl Really Got Into the Pen Business and How Sheaffer Really Got Into the Pencil Business . . . At the Same Time.

By Jonathan Veley

In the second decade of the Twentieth Century, two new writing instrument manufacturers – the W. A. Sheaffer Pen Co. and Wahl Eversharp – emerged seemingly out of nowhere to join L.E. Waterman Co. and Parker Pen Co. to form a fraternity of companies collectors now refer to as the “Big Four” pen manufacturers in the United States.

A major factor in the meteoric rise of both Sheaffer and Eversharp was a new marketing strategy: offering fountain pens and mechanical pencils as sets.   Although a few Nineteenth Century makers had offered matched dip pens and pencils or combination writing instruments, with the rise of the fountain pen industry in the latter part of the century the practice was largely abandoned.  Established makers such as Mabie Todd & Co., as an example, continued to manufacture jewelry-quality pencils, but generally maintained these lines separately from the new fountain pens Mabie Todd introduced.  Parker and Waterman established themselves exclusively as fountain pen firms in the 1880s; Waterman, in particular, was actively hostile to the idea of expanding product lines to include pencils of any sort.[i] 

Eversharp and Sheaffer both appeared to hit upon the idea of selling fountain pens and practical companion pencils together almost simultaneously, in 1917.  The two companies approached the idea from opposite sides of the coin:  Wahl was already producing Charles Keeran’s Eversharp pencils and added fountain pens to its product line with the acquisition of the Boston Fountain Pen Company; Sheaffer, on the other hand, began as a fountain pen company and added “Sharp Point” pencils patented by Walter Sheaffer to the company’s lineup.  Parker and Waterman, on the other hand, didn’t wake up and grudgingly develop matching pencils to accompany their fountain pens until the early 1920s.[ii]  By then, mechanical pencils had ceased to be a point of distinction among writing instrument manufacturers and had become a point of parity.

Sheaffer and Wahl Eversharp’s stories concerning exactly how each hit upon and capitalized upon this stroke of marketing genius has remained murky for nearly a century, with gaps and inconsistencies in the accepted versions of each company’s story.  There is, however, a third, untold story, which neatly fills in all the gaps and resolves all the inconsistencies in both the Eversharp and Sheaffer stories . . . perfectly.

The Accepted Version of the Sheaffer Story

Walter Sheaffer entered the fountain pen business in 1912.  His new lever-filled fountain pens were an immediate commercial success, and Sheaffer quickly established offices in New York, Chicago and elsewhere.  In 1915, he litigated his famous patent infringement case against C.E. Barrett and former partner George Kraker, which Sheaffer ultimately won.

As abruptly as if he had been bopped on the head with a Newtonian apple, Sheaffer took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to dash off plans for an entirely new mechanical pencil and applied for a patent on July 12, 1917.  By the fall of 1917, national advertising campaigns were launched for his new “Sharp Point” and the pen man entered into full-scale production of these new pencils.  Walter’s pencil, unlike most other pencil designs of the era, seemed to flow from his mind fully formed in one go:  there was no immediate need for refinements or improvements to clean up his original design, and his patent date of November 5, 1918 was stamped on millions of metal Sheaffer pencils through the mid-1920s. 

Figure 1.  A typical Sheaffer “Giftie Set” from the early 1920s.  From a catalog dated 1922 at the PCA’s library, Pencollectorsofamerica.com.  Courtesy PCA.

Sheaffer was a genius; however, as the casting of the preceding paragraph suggests, it seems extremely unlikely that a fountain pen designer would concoct – in one go – a design for a brand new mechanical pencil from scratch, or that a five-year-old pen company would be able to gear up production for an entirely new product so quickly.  It is also odd how little interest Sheaffer showed in designing mechanical pencils after this:  his subsequent contributions to the art were nothing more than the design for the familiar flared cap and a mechanical pencil he ostensibly co-invented in the late 1920s with prolific pencil inventor Lucifer Most – given Most’s overwhelming contributions to the field, Walter’s name was most certainly added to the patent application as a mere courtesy to Most’s benefactor.

Much more likely is that some unsung and undocumented hero devised the Sheaffer Sharp Point pencil, which Sheaffer patented in his own name, and that figure likely also helped Sheaffer’s fledgling pen company enter into large-scale production of the new pencils.

The Accepted Version of the Wahl Eversharp Story

Charles R. Keeran of Bloomington, Illinois developing a new mechanical pencil in the fall of 1913, which he began marketing as the “Ever Sharp” by the end of that year. [iii]  In 1915, Keeran’s Eversharp Pencil Company hired a Chicago firm, the Wahl Adding Machine Company (which had been incorporated in 1905 to manufacture John Wahl’s patented adding attachment for typewriters) to manufacture pencils.   Wahl liked the pencils so much that the company decided to get into the writing instrument business by acquired a controlling interest in Keeran’s company.   Wahl then purchased the Boston Fountain Pen Company in 1917, renamed itself “The Wahl Company” and thereafter manufactured and sold Eversharp pencils on its own account as well as Boston Fountain Pens under the new name “Tempoint.” 

Figure 2.  Wahl’s “Announcement Extraordinary” featuring Boston Pens and Ever Sharp Pencils, from the February, 1917 issue of Office Appliances.  Note the patently false statement, “We built the Ever sharp Perfect Point Pencil from its very conception.”  Half truths and outright lies such as these have kept the early history of Wahl Eversharp murky for a century.

There is a more detailed account of how a Chicago pencil maker happened upon an obscure, local company such as the Boston Fountain Pen Company, albeit from a somewhat compromised source:  Charles Keeran himself, who was ousted by Wahl in August, 1917.  Keeran (who believed he was not fairly compensated for his efforts) wrote a letter Wahl’s directors in 1928, in which he implored them to pay him more out of the goodness of their hearts; while the exercise was predictably unsuccessful, Keeran’s six-page letter extolls his many contributions to Wahl’s success, including his role in orchestrating the purchase of the Boston Fountain Pen Company.   

In Keeran’s letter, he indicates that he first noticed fountain pens made by the Boston Fountain Pen Company being sold at Wanamaker’s New York store in 1913, while he was test-marketing his new pencils in that store.  Keeran says when he heard that Boston might be available, he thought his pencil and the pen would make “a wonderful team,” and “for months” he tried to convince Wahl to purchase the company. 

On September 12, 1916, Keeran says he went to Boston to meet with Charles Brandt, the owner of the Boston Fountain Pen Company.  “[I]n one hour” Keeran claims he negotiated an option for sixty days to buy “the whole works” for $50,000.00, then procured an extension of the option until January 10, 1917.  On December 26, 1916, Keeran says he boarded a train for Boston with Wahl’s Vice President, C.S. Roberts, to exercise the option.  However, when they arrived Brandt refused to sell, leaving Keeran and Roberts with “little to do but sit in the hotel and play rummy” for two weeks while lawyers worked things out.  The transaction finally closed sometime in January, 1917.

According to Keeran, “I had developed the finest pencil made and had brought to it as a team mate the finest pen,” and no other source controverts Keeran’s claim to have orchestrated the deal.  Yet in August, 1917, Keeran is abruptly informed that Wahl had replaced him as sales manager.  Within weeks, Keeran resigns.

Figure 3.  The conclusion of Charles Keeran’s 1928 letter.  Bob Bolin has reproduced the entire letter at http://unllib.unl.edu/Bolin_resources/pencil_page/keeran/index.htm.

Despite the whiney tone of Keeran’s letter overall, most of his story is corroborated by a close examination of the evidence.  However, three aspects of Keeran’s story fail to make sense: (1) If the Boston option was good through January 10, 1917, why did Keeran and Roberts board a train the day after Christmas from Chicago to Boston to consummate the deal?  (2) Why would Charles Brandt be convinced to sell his business to a complete stranger in just an hour, renew the option, then refuse to sell?  (3) Why would Charles Keeran, who negotiated a deal which by all accounts catapulted Wahl Eversharp to fame and prosperity in early 1917, suddenly find himself ousted in August, 1917?

Enter William E. Smith

One detail in Keeran’s account which stands out is from whom he learned that the Boston Fountain Pen Company might be available:  “from one of my super-salesmen, ‘Bill’ Smith.”   In Keeran’s self-laudatory, six-page letter, this is the only credit Keeran gives to anyone other than himself for having a good idea.  There’s a reason why Keeran dropped Smith’s name, and once those reasons are explored, Keeran’s statement that he casually thought Boston pens “might make a good teammate” for his pencils takes on an entirely different context. 

William Smith was not, as his letter implies, merely one of Keeran’s salesmen:  he was a hugely influential character and nearly forgotten character in the writing instrument business, and it is his career trajectory which brings the Sheaffer and Wahl stories together.

Figure 4.  Bill Smith is shown here relaxing with daughter Helen years after the events of our story.  From the November, 1922 issue of Office Appliances, at page 49.

Although a name like William E. Smith may be about as common a name as one might find, he appears to have been the same man who filed a patent application on May 7, 1889 for an ink shutoff valve, granted as patent number 427,444 on May 6, 1890.  Although the patent is unassigned, the inventor’s residence provided on the application is Berwick, Pennsylvania – less than twelve miles from the Paul Wirt Fountain Pen Company in Bloomsburg, and Wirt had an uncharacteristically cooperative relationship with the fledgling and equally litigious L.E. Waterman Company. 

The man who was clearly the William E. Smith in our story began working for Waterman around 1905,[iv]  and Smith quickly rose through the ranks at his new place of employment.  Pen historians are well-acquainted with a 1907 lecture concerning the history of fountain pens and how L.E. Waterman pens were made on behalf of the Company, an abstract of which appeared in the January, 1907 issue of The Druggists’ Circular.[v]  Less well known is that William E. Smith was the presentor.  By 1910, he is listed as an officer of Aikin Lambert & Co. (which was by 1907 under L. E. Waterman’s control), and in 1911, Waterman announced that the company had appointed Smith to be its “Western manager,” with offices in Chicago.[vi]  Smith’s gift of gab made him a darling of the stationers’ press, which regularly reported on “Bill’s” activities. 

Figure 5.  This article, published in the January, 1907 issue of The Druggists’ Circular, is well known among Waterman collectors; nearly forgotten is that it was penned by William E. Smith.

By 1913, there were signs that something was amiss in Smith’s relationship with his employer.  On August 11, 1913, Geyer’s Stationer reported that L.E. Waterman’s auditor, Frank S. Waterman, paid a visit to Smith’s offices in Chicago “on Thursday last;” at the time, Smith was “calling on the trade” in Cleveland, Ohio.  The article does not indicate whether Smith was expecting Waterman; however, according to the article Waterman boarded a train for Cleveland the following day, “where he held a brief conference with W.E. Smith.”[vii]   It seems unlikely that Auditor Waterman was going to such lengths to track down William Smith in order to compliment him on a tidy set of books. 

Two months later, in October, 1913, the next directory of Aikin Lambert’s officers is published, and William E. Smith’s name is no longer listed.  A report of November 3, 1913, states Smith was reportedly on a trip eastward to Indianapolis and Columbus, and westward towards St. Louis on behalf of Waterman, which “requires about ten days to cover.”[viii]  However, by November 24, when Fred P. Seymour of Waterman arrives in Chicago, Smith still hasn’t left Ohio.  Seymour was disappointed -- he “was expecting to meet W. E. Smith, Chicago Manager of the Waterman Co., at some point in Ohio, and proceed to Chicago with him.”[ix]

Was L.E. Waterman sending a company man to find its wandering Western manager in Ohio and escort him back to his office?  In hindsight, it was clear that the L.E. Waterman Co. no longer believed Smith was really plying the fields for Waterman business, and that Smith was planning his next career move.  When the annual Chicago Stationers’ Dinner rolled around on January 10, 1914, William Smith (whose presence was as much an annual institution as the event itself) was conspicuously absent; he did not even telegraph his regrets, as did so many other prominent members who were unavailable that evening.  L.E. Waterman, on the other hand, was well-represented at the banquet by several company men, including Seymour, and while none of them are identified as Smith’s replacement, no explanation was offered as to why L.E. Waterman’s Chicago manager failed to attend the Chicago Stationers’ Banquet.

Figure 6.  The 1914 Chicago Stationers’ Dinner, from the January 17, 1914 issue of The American Stationer, at page 4.  

Smith and Waterman had likely parted ways by that point, and Smith was laying low.  He shows up, apparently unexpectedly, on January 30, 1914 in Minneapolis, where he received a hero’s welcome at the Minneapolis Stationers’ Banquet.  “Loud and frequent calls were made to the toastmaster for an impromptu speech from the Hon. Bill Smith,” The American Stationer said in a report dated February 7, 1914.  “Men should reach the height of their ambition when they have gained the love and respect of their fellowmen, and the cheers that greeted him, when he arose to speak, echoed throughout the hall.  This silver-tongued orator held his audience in perfect silence as he related the gradual development of trade associations and effectively drove them home with wit and humor the good derived from them.”[x]

Loved, respected, silver-tongued and “Honorable.”  Smith was described as everything but a Waterman man.  Just a few days later, he would have a new title.

Colonel Smith Reports to Fort Madison

On February 14, 1914, The American Stationer reported that the “Honorable” William E. Smith had returned to Chicago and was working for the “Shafer Pen Company.”[xi]   The American Stationer reported in August, 1914, that Smith was in charge of Sheaffer’s booth at the Jewelers’ Convention in Chicago along with B.T. Coulson, the Secretary of the company at the time.[xii]  In the August report, for the first time, Smith is referred to as “Colonel,” an appellation he may have coined rather than earned through actual military service.  One wonders whether Smith, having left L.E. Waterman and his title as “Western Manager,” had been asked what his office was with Sheaffer and, having none as yet, flippantly responded with “Colonel,” a name which stuck.   This is supported not only by Smith’s unexplained promotion from “Honorable” to “Colonel,” but also by the fact that when The American Stationer casually made reference to the fact that Smith had become Sheaffer’s Chicago Office Manager in October, 1914, he was referred to only as “Mr. Smith.”[xiii]

Figure 7. The announcement from The American Stationer of William Smith’s employment by the “Shafer Pen Company.”

Walter A. Sheaffer traveled to Chicago to attend the Chicago Stationers’ Dinner with Smith in January, 1915; for Smith, it must have been a triumphant return, after missing the previous year’s event due to his separation from L.E. Waterman.  He was apparently in rare form, “with his high hat and expansive shirt bosom, dispensing good wishes and good cheer wherever he moved.”[xiv]

Smith had become a key Sheaffer employee at a pivotal moment in Sheaffer’s history.  In late January, 1915, Sheaffer returned to Chicago for a sit-down with Smith and his sales force, “to plan the year’s work and to talk over matters of interest to the company and the salesmen.”[xv]  There is no question what the first (and perhaps only) item on the agenda was for that meeting:  Sheaffer’s patent litigation with his former business partner, George Kraker, the trial of which was scheduled to begin two weeks later.  Walter Sheaffer’s position was precarious in 1915, a notion which is difficult to visualize a century later.  A summary of the innovations leading up to Sheaffer’s lawsuit with Kraker illustrates how Sheaffer’s very survival – and William Smith’s livelihood – depended on a very uncertain outcome.

Today, Walter Sheaffer remains widely credited as the inventor of the lever-filler fountain pen, but that legacy is not accurate.  The first to patent a lever-filled fountain pen in the United States was John Barnes of Rockford, Illinois, who applied for his patent on June 3, 1903 and received patent number 738,876 with lightning speed (by patent standards) on September 15, 1903.[xvi]   Patent drawings for Walter Sheaffer’s first patent, applied for on March 2, 1908, show a flat “compression plate” which slid up and down between rails mounted at the end of the barrel.  Without a spring, no tension held the lever flush with the barrel, so Sheaffer’s 1908 pen featured a locking ring to hold the lever flush with the barrel.  Sheaffer’s patent was issued as number 896,861 on August 25, 1908; on December 10, 1912, Sheaffer received patent number 1,046,660, for a better way of securing his compression plate to the bottom of the barrel, but as was the case in his 1908 design, the compression plate was also flat – leaving the lever to flop around and randomly discharge ink.  Obviously, neither design worked well.

Sheaffer’s third patent, for which he applied on February 19, 1913 (issued as patent number 1,118,240 on November 24, 1914) was for a flexible compression bar which stayed flush with the barrel wall by tension, which in turn held the lever down at rest.   When the lever was lifted, the plate would flex inward; when released, the lever would snap flush with the barrel as the plate returned to its resting position. 

Figure 8.  Walter Sheaffer’s patent number 1,118,240, which he applied for on February 19, 1913.

There was only one problem with Sheaffer’s design:  it may not have been his idea. 

Whether it was Sheaffer himself or one of his employees who devised the version of a compression bar that would make Sheaffer’s pens such a huge success may not have mattered, so long as everybody remained in Walter Sheaffer’s happy family, but they didn’t.  George Kraker and salesman Harvey Craig left Sheaffer, and the newly formed Kraker Pen Company established a factory in Kansas City, Missouri during fiscal year 1913-1914:[xvii]  Kraker applied for his own version of a lever-filled pen on February 25, 1914,[xviii] and on April 9, 1914, Craig filed an application for a lever-filler which was nearly identical to Sheaffer’s design.[xix]

Figure 9. Harvey Craig’s patent number 1,242,323, applied for on April 9, 1914. 

First to file a patent application is not necessarily the winner, and the United States Patent Office quickly began working to resolve the Interference Action (the term used for proceedings to determine which party was the true inventor in cases where conflicting patents are applied for with respect to the same innovation).  In the meantime, Sheaffer sued everybody for patent infringement – Kraker, Craig and even C.E. Barrett, the first named defendant in the litigation, whose only involvement in the affair was to supply parts to Kraker’s new company.  Kraker and Craig counterclaimed against Sheaffer, also for infringement.

Everything was on the line in this Midwestern smackdown, both for Sheaffer and for Kraker.  Whichever party was found to have infringed upon the other would not only be prevented from continuing to produce the disputed design, but would pay significant damages to the other for the infraction.  Although Sheaffer was the bigger player, that only meant the damages that could be assessed against him would likewise be greater.  As between these two, whoever prevailed in the case would likely own the other.

Presumably, Sheaffer was in Chicago to assure Smith and his staff of the company’s chances of success and continued domination of the lever-filled pen market.  On February 11, 1915, Sheaffer was back in Chicago when the trial began in the case of Walter A. Sheaffer vs. C.E. Barrett. US District Ct, Northern District of IL, Eastern Division. In Equity. No. 348.[xx] Arguments in the case would rage on for months, generating a transcript in excess of 2,000 pages.

Regardless of who won Sheaffer’s case against Kraker, the winner would not have the exclusive rights to market any lever filler fountain pen – only the version that Kraker and Sheaffer were fighting over.  What might happen if some third party came up with another, perhaps better version of the lever filler which did not violate either the Sheaffer or Kraker patents?   Was that issue raised or addressed during Sheaffer’s meeting with his Chicago staff in January?  One thing is certain:  if that question wasn’t raised in January, 1915, Smith was certainly asking it by March.

Shortly after the trial began, any reassurances Sheaffer might have offered his Chicago staff were compromised -- by none other than Smith’s former employer, L.E. Waterman.  On March 19, 1915, Edwin F. Britten, Jr. filed a patent application for a different variation of the lever filler, utilizing what we now refer to as a j-bar.  Waterman introduced the new pens under the designation “PSF” for “pocket safety filler” in the March, 1915 issue of the company’s newsletter, The Pen Prophet.[xxi]  Surviving examples of these early pens are stamped on one side of the lever with Barnes’ 1903 patent date, indicating that Waterman had purchased or licensed rights to use his invention, as well as “Patent Applied for” on the other side.

Figure 10. The pressure builds on Walter Sheaffer:  The L.E. Waterman Company’s 1915 announcement in The Pen Prophet introducing Waterman’s version of the lever-filled pen, made pursuant to a 1903 patent predating Sheaffer’s.

Smith was in a quandary:  Sheaffer may or may not survive.  Even if Sheaffer did, he would not enjoy dominance over the lever-filler, and Smith had already alienated L.E. Waterman.  To make matters worse, Smith had apparently risen as high as he could in the Sheaffer organization.   B.T. Coulson, Smith’s co-worker at the Sheaffer booth during the 1914 Chicago Jewelers’ Convention, was promoted to Vice President of the company, and Sheaffer also appointed Coulson to manage Sheaffer’s newly established office in New York.   Coulson was now Smith’s eastern counterpart for Sheaffer – but with a heftier title.  

The stationers’ press is uncharacteristically silent about Smith’s activities for most of 1915, with the exception of notations that he made sales trips to St. Louis (coincidentally or not, this was B.T. Coulson’s home) and Detroit; Sheaffer and his legal team might well have advised Smith and his staff to curtail public speaking during the trial.   But towards the end of 1915, Smith reappears in a news report of an event which, in retrospect, proved to be a moment which forever changed pen history.

On September 17, 1915, William Smith attended a dinner reception for stationers en route to San Francisco for the Pan Pacific Exposition (the 1915 Worlds’ Fair).  None of the guests were identified by their company associations, so it is unclear whether Smith was attending the dinner as a Sheaffer representative (there is a “Mr. and Mrs. Shaffer” on the guest list, which may refer to Walter Sheaffer, during which time the press was still having trouble spelling his name correctly).  What is interesting about reports of this September 17 dinner, however, is not who Smith was representing, but with whom he was dining:  Charles R. Keeran.[xxii] 

Figure 11. A fateful guest list for the September 17, 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition reception.

This was likely the first time the veteran Smith and newcomer Keeran met.  At the time, Keeran’s offices were in Bloomington and his pencils being manufactured by George W. Heath in Newark, New Jersey; in his 1928 letter he said that his trip to the Pan American Exposition was his most ambitious effort in marketing up to that point.   Keeran was actively recruiting salesmen on his San Francisco trip, and the crowd at this reception was intimate enough that there can be no doubt that the gregarious Smith and ambitious Keeran had ample time to become acquainted. 

Did Smith share with Keeran any concerns he had about Sheaffer’s future?  Did Keeran try to recruit Smith?  There is no surviving account of what the two talked about, but the events that transpired soon after certainly suggest so.  Two weeks after Keeran’s dinner with Smith, on October 1, the Wahl Adding Machine Company would begin manufacturing Keeran’s Ever Sharp pencils in his effort to keep up with the demand.  Two months after this dinner, Keeran moved his Eversharp Pencil Company from Bloomington to the Lytton Building in Chicago.[xxiii]    

Three months after this dinner, the press reported that Colonel Smith had abruptly resigned from Sheaffer after “a trip East.”  “In order that his future plans may be given the widest publicity possible in stationary circles, where he is so well known throughout the country,” the article states, “Mr. Smith has authorized The American Stationer to state that he is having better than usual returns from his chicken ranch at Norwood Park this year, and as nice fresh eggs – the kind manufactured at the Smith ranch – are selling at from six to eight cents apiece, Bill is not worried about the future.”[xxiv]

The article is clearly tongue-in-cheek:  Smith knew exactly what his next move was – it was planned during his “trip East.”  When he made that move, Smith had it all planned out to be spectacular.

Figure 12.  Just a couple weeks after this article was printed, Colonel Smith would no longer concern himself with the price of eggs. 

Part two of the series continues at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/12/wahl-sheaffer-and-race-for-boston-part_27.html.

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[i] Waterman had acquired control of Aikin Lambert & Co. by 1907, as detailed by David Nishimura at http://www.vintagepensblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/waterman-and-aikin-lambert.html.  However, Waterman kept Aikin Lambert’s product lines completely separate from its own until the early 1920s.

[ii] Parker introduced the “Lucky Lock” pencil in late 1922; Waterman first offered matching Aikin Lambert pencils with its pens in the company’s 1919 catalog, but did not develop its own pencil until 1923.

[iii]In this article, the difference between “Eversharp” and “Ever Sharp” is intentional and depends upon context.  When Charles Keeran incorporated his company as the “Eversharp Pencil Company,” he was apparently unaware that there was another company at the time marketing a different pencil called the “Eversharp” (the “Rapid Fire Eversharp,” a multi-pointed pencil).  Keeran quickly renamed his pencil the “Ever Sharp,” but he didn’t change the name of his company.  By the time Wahl began making Keeran’s pencils on its own account, the “other” Eversharp was defunct, and Wahl contracted “Eversharp” back into one word.

[iv] The Publishers’ Weekly, May 20, 1905, at page 1374.

[v] The Druggists’ Circular, January, 1907, at page 70.

[vi] The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer, November 1, 1911, at page 370. 

[vii] Geyer’s Stationer, August 11, 1913, at page 10.

[viii] Geyer’s Stationer, Vol. 36, number 1409, at page 6.

[ix] Geyer’s Stationer, Vol. 36, No. 1412, at page 6.

[x] The American Stationer, February 14, 1914, at page 3.

[xi] The American Stationer, February 14, 1914, at page 6.

[xii] The American Stationer, August 29, 1914, at page 5.

[xiii] The American Stationer, October 24, 1914, at page 98.

[xiv] The American Stationer, January 16, 1915, at page 5.

[xv] The American Stationer, February 6, 1915, at page 6.  The report is dated February 1, and states that Sheaffer was in town “the first of the week.”

[xvi] As the Court noted in Barrett v. Sheaffer., 251 F.Rep. at 75, there was also the “Swedish Patent to Johansson, No. 5,380, issued August 18, 1894.”

[xvii] Congressional Serial Set Volume 22, page 107.

[xviii] The patent was issued on August 15, 1916 as number 1,194,510.

[xix] Craig’s patent wasn’t issued until October 9, 1917 as number 1,242,323.

[xx]Nishimura, David, “New Evidence for the Early History of the Sheaffer Pen Company: Introduction & Notes [2001], http://www.vintagepens.com/first_Sheaffers_intro.htm.

[xxi] A copy of this issue is available in the PCA’s library:  https://www.pencollectorsofamerica.com/component/docman/doc_download/346-waterman-l-e-company-magazine-the-pen-prophet-1915-march-8-pages?Itemid=

[xxii] Walden’s Stationer and Printer, October 11, 1915, at page 39.

[xxiii] Typewriter Topics, November, 1915, at page 178.

[xxiv] The American Stationer, December 18, 1915, at page 30.