Presto Footnote Number Two

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Now that I’ve had a few years to think about it, something that I found confusing years ago isn’t so confusing after all.

Remember that flat clip that appears in the Presto advertisements beginning in 1924?

Outside of the Nupoint/Hi-Speed/Presto family of pencils, that distinctive clip also appears on another brand . . . pencils marked “Gold Medal,” a name which pen lore traditionally attributes exclusively to C.E. Barrett and National Pen Products.  I first documented that clip in February, 2012 (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/02/pair-of-gold-medals.html), showing it alongside a larger Gold Medal made by the Rex Manufacturing Company:

Some time later, in “The Monster Footnote” (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-monster-footnote.html), I was tearing my hair out wondering why that same clip appeared, from left in this next picture, on the Gold Medal, the Nupoint, and on a Salz “Manhattan”:

With the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think it is quite as complicated or mind-blowing as I used to.  Since Barrett and National Pen Products had absoluttely nothing to do with the large flattops supplied to them by the Rex Manufacturing Company from 1924 on, it isn’t a stretch to believe that Barrett also had metal pencils supplied to him by outside vendors prior to that date.

The year 1924 was also an interesting one in the history of Salz Brothers, which had just been denied registration of the name ‘Salrite due to its similarity to “Shur-Rite” (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/09/before-salz-was-salz-part-ii.html).   And remember . . . while the ‘Salrite was a unique product marketed by Salz, the pencils were actually manufactured by a separate (but related) company, the Pencil Products Corporation.  Perhaps in 1924, as ‘Salrites were being sold on clearance and Pencil Products Corporation closed shop, Salz started acquiring pencils from other sources – and as a New York Company, who better to turn to than another New York concern such as Kanner’s Nupoint?

I think the answer is that for a short time in 1924, Kanner’s Nupoint was also being supplied to other companies, rebadged as “Gold Medal” or “Salz Manhattan” pencils, and that distinctive clip is likely in the future (especially in combination with that pivoted top) to peg other brands as having originated from that same source.

The story isn’t neatly wrapped up with a bow on it just yet.  Kanner’s Nupoint was being supplied to others under different names, but I’m still not entirely sure whether it was Kanner himself who was making it.  We still have that somewhat confusing reference in a 1922 issue of The American Stationer indicating that Aikin Lambert was making them (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/10/youll-flip-your-top-for-these.html):

. . . and an example marked ALCo with that pivoting top . . .

Which might leave you wondering why I’m bothering to consider Wahl as the maker of the Presto repeating pencils?  Because Aikin Lambert – by then a wholly-owned subidiary of Waterman – never made a repeater, and Eversharp not only made one, it was sued by the successors to the Presto for infringement of its very patent.

Maybe Kanner had Aikin Lambert supply the flip top screw drive pencils, but later contracted with Wahl to make the company’s repeaters.  In the dog-eat-dog world of the 1920s, if Barrett and Salz were acquiring pencils from more than one source, why wouldn’t Kanner?