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The Compromise, Part Two: as to Mechanical Pencils
Within six months of the Boston sale, Walter Sheaffer, who had
never before shown any interest in pencils, filed a patent application for a
fully-developed mechanical pencil and launched a national advertising campaign
to market his new “Sharp Point” pencils.
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| Early Sheaffer Sharp Point pencils, from the author’s collection. |
Did Sheaffer initiate a mechanical pencil program from
scratch in such a short time? I conclude
that he did not. Given how quickly Sheaffer
is alleged to have invented, filed a patent application for and geared up
production of a pencil as well-developed as the Sharp Point, it is far more
likely that Sheaffer acquired an existing mechanical pencil design from someone
else, filed the patent application for that design in his own name and
introduced the new pencil as his own.
With all eyes focused on the Boston Fountain Pen Company at
the beginning of 1917, the logical “someone else” from whom Sheaffer might have
acquired this design would have been Boston.
Is there evidence that Boston – or at least one of its key employees -- was
in the process of developing a mechanical pencil at the time the company was
sold? Yes, there is, and the
circumstances suggest that fact was not communicated to Wahl’s directors at the
time of the Boston sale.
That evidence also reveals who, in all probability, actually
invented Sheaffer’s Sharp Point pencil.
The Ghost of Boston
The sale of the Boston Fountain Pen Company was announced in
the January 11, 1917 edition of Geyer’s
Stationer, which identified unnamed “Chicago interests” as the
purchaser. “Mr. [C.S.] Roberts said that
the company’s business would be continued as usual,” the report states, “and
that the new owners would continue to manufacture Boston Safety Fountain pens
at the company’s factory in Everett, Mass.”[i] This initial report does not identify those
“Chicago interests” and indicated that “the details of the purchase were not
yet ready for publication.”
In February, 1917, Office
Appliances contained two conflicting reports concerning the sale. “The Eversharp Pencil Company [controlled by at
least some of the Wahl Adding Machine Company’s directors] announce that they
have purchased the entire interest of the Boston Safety fountain pen,”[ii]
states the more polished of the two articles.
However, a brief announcement near
the end of the issue indicates that “Keeran & Co. [controlled by Charles
Keeran] have purchased the business and good will, and all the physical assets
of the Boston Fountain Pen Company.”[iii] By Keeran’s own admission, it was not his
money that bought Boston, and advertisements in the following months confirmed
that the Eversharp Pencil Company was the actual purchaser. If Keeran himself was the source of a report
that he rather than his employer was the purchaser, this might have provided an
initial spark of tension that eventually resulted in Keeran’s dismissal later
that year. If so, however, that was not
the last straw.
 |
| Figure 1 |
 |
| Figure 2 |
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| Figure 3. Use of the words “Eversharp” and “Wahl” in this story can be confusing. Prior to January, 1917, the Wahl Adding Machine Company manufactured “Ever Sharp” (two words) pencils for the Eversharp Pencil Company. In mid-1916, some of the Wahl Adding Machine Company’s directors – it remains unclear whether it was all of them or some of them -- acquired a controlling interest in the Eversharp Pencil Company. For a few months after the Eversharp Pencil Company purchased the Boston Fountain Pen Company, advertisements such as the one shown from the March, 1917 issue of Office Appliances (Figure 1) advertised both the pencil business and the new Wahl Pen business as owned by the Eversharp Pencil Company. By June, 1917, Office Appliances published another advertisement (Figure 2) indicating that ownership of The Eversharp Pencil Company had formally passed to the Wahl Adding Machine Company. By September, 1918, advertisements such as the one shown from The Saturday Evening Post (Figure 3) indicate that the company was formally reorganized as The Wahl Company. Wahl sold its adding machine business to The Remington Typewriter Company in 1920. |
Even though C.S. Roberts announced that business would carry
on as usual at the Boston Fountain Pen company, it did not – not with the same
people, anyway. After the initial
announcement of the purchase in Geyer’s,
the very next issue, on January 18, announced that George F. Brandt had joined
the American Fountain Pen Company, as it was still known at the time – the
company would later be renamed after the inventor of its flagship product, the
Moore Non-Leakable Pen, to become the Moore Pen Company.[iv]
An announcement published in April, 1917
indicated that Moore had also hired M.G. Sypher, Boston’s superintendent of
production, and John G. Liddell, “head mechanic” for Boston.[v] Liddell went on to patent several innovations
for Moore, including both of Moore’s early designs for mechanical pencils,
patented in 1922 and 1925. Neither of
those designs, however, bears any resemblance to Sheaffer’s Sharp Point.
Eversharp was able to entice “Mr. Miller,” Boston’s “gold
pen expert,” to remain in their employ.
As long as Eversharp had Boston’s patent rights, equipment and
nibmeister, Eversharp probably did have sufficient resources to carry on
production, although the departure of so many key figures might explain why
Eversharp appeared slow to ramp up production in its own name. Colonel William Smith, the central figure
from the first part of this article, also remained in Eversharp’s employ for a
time after the sale. Smith attended the
1917 Chicago Stationer’s Dinner on January 13 representing Eversharp, where he
reprised his previous year’s stunt, presenting each of the ladies in attendance
with a writing implement. This time,
however, he presented Eversharp’s newly-developed ringtop pencils rather than a
Boston Fountain Pen.[vi] Smith also may have been instrumental in
luring one of his former co-workers from L.E. Waterman over to Eversharp: Church Todd.[vii]
One figure central to the events leading up to Boston’s
purchase is conspicuously absent from announcements, both from Moore and
Eversharp: David J. LaFrance, longtime
superintendent of company as well as the inventor of Boston’s lever-filled fountain
pen design.
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| Figure 4: Moore’s announcement, inexplicably published in the April, 1917 issue of the Detroit, Michigan Bulletin of Pharmacy. If M.G. Sypher was Boston’s superintendent, what had become of David J. LaFrance? |
Rise of the Sheaffer Sharp Point
In May, 1917, Sheaffer’s New York offices were moved from
270 Broadway to “newer and larger quarters” at 203 Broadway.[viii]
The
American Stationer stated that the move was “owing to an enormous increase
in business,” and the article contained assurances to dealers that Sheaffer
would not compete with them. “This
office is maintained for the convenience of dealers and not for the purpose of
competing with them in any way,” the piece recites. “Increased facilities for deliveries from
stock, and for making repairs of all kinds will be at hand in the new
quarters.”[ix]
The announcement, coincidentally or not, appears on a page
of Boston stationers’ news.
On July 12, 1917, Walter A. Sheaffer filed a patent
application for a new mechanical pencil.
The July, 1917 issue of Office
Appliances included a full-page ad by the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company,
picturing this same pencil. “Here is the
first advertisement of our big fall advertising campaign which will appear in
thirteen of the country’s leading magazines between August and January,
reaching over 15,000,000 people,” the ad states. “This sales-building advertising is going to
make 1917 a banner year for dealers who carry a complete stock of Sheaffer
Fountain Pens and the new SHARP POINT PENCIL.”[x] True to his word, the Fort Madison, Iowa
company made a big advertising splash for the new Sharp Point beginning in
August, 1917.
 |
| Figure 5: Sheaffer’s announcement of the new “Sharp Point” pencil. |
One thing Sheaffer’s advertising didn’t publicize about the
company’s new Sharp Point was that it wasn’t made in Fort Madison. In 1919, another address for Sheaffer’s New
York office works its way into Sheaffer advertising as well as news
accounts: 440 Canal Street. The earliest reference to this address is a
trade announcement concerning Sheaffer’s authorization “to do business in New
York State” in June, 1919, and it locates Arthur L. Kugel, Sheaffer’s New York
representative, at the Canal Street address.[xi] The announcement indicates that Sheaffer was
already at 440 Canal, so the move occurred earlier. No reason is provided for the move, which is
odd given that the stationers’ press routinely reported on such things,
including the moves of Sheaffer. Was 440
Canal merely another site from which the company would make repairs and
“deliveries of stock?”
No. It was a manufacturing
facility, supervised by Arthur L. Kugel.[xii] Passing references to the use of Canal Street
by Sheaffer during the time do not indicate what
was made there, but Kugel’s activities suggest that 440 Canal Street was
outfitted to manufacture Sheaffer Sharp Point pencils. As soon as Canal Street was up and running, in
May, 1919, Arthur L. Kugel started splitting his time between New York and Fort
Madison, helping Sheaffer set up a new pencil factory in Fort Madison.[xiii]
When Walter Sheaffer returned to New York in June, 1921, he
came, among other reasons, to visit what was referred to simply as “the New
York factory.” He wasn’t just visiting:
at that point, Sheaffer was there to coordinate the closure of the Canal Street
location, as the company prepared to move its New York quarters yet again, to a
non-manufacturing, upper-floor office in the Pennsylvania Building at the
corner of 7th Avenue and 30th Street. A month later, in July, 1921, Sheaffer
announced that its new pencil factory at Fort Madison was operational.[xiv]
Kugel resigned from Sheaffer in May, 1921, just two months
before the July announcement. By then,
he had irrevocably become a pencil man: his next career move was to join the
newly formed Realite Pencil Company.[xv] The resignation was a friendly one, with
Kugel remaining on Sheaffer’s board through September, 1921, suggesting that
Kugel had simply worked himself out of a job.
He was replaced by Leslie Blumenthal, the former Kraker man who managed
Sheaffer’s Kansas City operations.[xvi]
When I put all of these pieces together, I conclude Arthur
L. Kugel set up the Canal Street factory in New York at least in part to make
the new Sharp Points on a temporary basis in early 1919, while he assisted
Sheaffer with the construction of a more permanent pencil manufacturing
facility in Fort Madison. When the new
factory was completed, so was Kugel’s mission.
But there’s one problem with this timeline: Sheaffer introduced the Sharp Point in
mid-1917. Where were they made? And where was David J. LaFrance during this
time?
For a year and a half after Boston’s acquisition by
Eversharp, David J. LaFrance, inventor of Boston’s lever-filler pen, seems to
disappear. Although one news report stated
that he had been the superintendent of the Boston Fountain Pen Company for 15
years,[xvii]
Moore’s April 1917 announcement identifies M. G. Sypher as Boston’s former superintendent. The facts that someone other than LaFrance
was identified as Boston’s superintendent, and that neither Eversharp nor Moore
announced that LaFrance had entered their employ, suggests that LaFrance might
have left the Boston Fountain Pen Company before the sale to Eversharp was
finalized.
Another later report stated that LaFrance previously “had an
experience of 21 years in the manufacture of fountain pens, including the
Waterman, Moore and others,”[xviii]
but this leaves open the question of whether LaFrance’s service at Waterman and
Moore was before or after his time with Boston – as well as who the “others”
were. Was LaFrance working for Sheaffer,
ramping up production of a new pencil he had invented, the rights to which
Sheaffer acquired?
I believe so – though whether or not David J. LaFrance knew
it, only for so long as Walter Sheaffer needed him.
Walter Sheaffer was not a man to make the same mistake
twice. In 1913, his partner George
Kraker and salesman Harvey Craig left his company while Sheaffer’s patent
application for the double bar lever filler was still pending, leaving open to
conjecture whether in fact he was the true inventor. Any deal Sheaffer might have negotiated to
bring David J. LaFrance and his pencil design into the fold would have ensured
that LaFrance would remain under Sheaffer’s thumb until the issuance of his
patent was all but secured.
On November 5, 1918, a date mechanical pencil collectors
know by heart, Walter Sheaffer was issued patent 1,284,156 for the mechanical
pencil that we know as the Sharp Point.
At almost exactly the same time, David J. LaFrance reemerges with an old
friend and a new enterprise.
 |
| Figure 6: Sheaffer’s patent number 1,284,156. |
The story continues at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/12/wahl-sheaffer-and-race-for-boston-part_29.html.
[i] Geyer’s Stationer, January 11, 1917, at
page 22.
[ii] Office Appliances, February, 1917, at
page 33.
[iii] Id. at 182.
[iv] Geyer’s Stationer, January 18, 1917, at
page 36.
[v] The Bulletin of Pharmacy, Detroit,
Michigan, April, 1917, at page 67.
[vi] Office Appliances, February, 1917, at
page 41.
[vii] Office Appliances, February, 1917, at
page 33.
[viii]
Walden’s Stationer & Printer, April
25, 1917, at page 82.
[ix] The American Stationer, May 5, 1917, at
page 6.
[x] Office Appliances, July, 1917, at page
109.
[xi] India Rubber World, June, 1919, at page
504.
[xiii]
The American Stationer, February 4,
1922, at page 32.
[xiv] Office Appliances, July, 1921 at page
170.
[xv] id.
[xvi] Geyer’s Stationer, August 18, 1921, at
page 18.
[xvii]
The Cambridge Tribune, October 16,
1920.
[xviii]
The Cambridge Chronicle, January 1,
1921.
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