Hoffman and Boman Ride Again

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The Eagle Pencil Company is one of my favorite manufacturers to collect, since the dizzying array of innovations the company introduced – some great, some just plain goofy – provides endless variety.

One of the best ideas the company had was that of the “Automatic” or “Stop Gauge” pencil, first patented by Joseph Hoffman in 1879 and later refined in 1885 by Claes Boman.  These thick lead pencils, which merely held lead in a chuck that would be released by the press of a button on the aft end, are the great granddaddy of all techincal leadholders and all modern “clutch” style pencils,

There were also later incarnations of the Stop Gauge, such as these:

These things are like an elephant hiding in the corner.  Although they are much larger than most pencils, for some reason they just don’t jump out at you as much as you would expect, and it wasn’t until just a couple years ago that I know they existed.  At the tip end you’ll find the characteristc thick lead and gripping jaws:

On the cap, they are identified as the “Clutch” No. 692 – and with a more recent patent number of 2,134,570:

The patent number refers to Joseph Meilner’s pencil, for which he applied for a patent on May 17, 1935 and which was granted on October 25, 1938:

I’ve read and reread the text of the patent, and I honestly can’t tell what was new and exciting about Meilner’s incarnation of the pencil.  Even the sharpener built into the cap he states is just an optional bit, and nothing is claimed as patentable for that feature (besides, it was opted out in all three of my examples). 

There was another less robust version of the Stop Gauge , too: the model number 10, which more closely resembled its ancestor.  There’s one shown amongst the early Eagles pictured on page 45 of The Catalogue, It’s the gold colored one near the middle:

I don’t think this one belongs in the company of Victorian Eagles, though.  While the design is older (notwithstanding the “Pat. Pend.” imprint), the No.10 probably dates to the 1930s – this example turned up on a store card with an Eagle logo dating to the Depression, and referring to it on the card only as the Eagle “Prestop”:

Note also the indication that the Prestop took a four-inch lead, which also places this example squarely in the “Square 4" era. 

Lastly, along the lines of the Clutch and the No. 10 is this odd duck:

This one shares the same overall appearance of the No. 10 and uses a thicker lead like the “Clutch,” but this has a nose drive twist mechanism:

Chris Egolf turned this one up for me.  It’s an Eagle “75-60,” and it apparently cost twenty cents, twice the price of the number 10:

The numbering is significant . . . or maybe it isn’t.  In its earliest incarnation, the Stop Gauge was sometimes referred to as the “Automatic.”   In the the thirties, Eagle applied the name to a spiral drive plastic pencils - with a 75- model number, and the “Giant Automatics,” the large souvenir pencils with a conventional nose drive stuck in the front end, which all share a 75- prefix as well.