Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Speaking of Boxes . . .

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Yesterday’s Sheaffer working togs pencil in black wasn’t much, were it not for the beautiful box in which it was housed.   Here’s a box that’s even nicer:


This trapezoidal jewel has one of the aluminum-barrel Eversharp repeaters from 1937 or so strapped to the inside of the lid:


And you can see some paperwork peeking out in there.  It doesn’t offer much to today’s discussion, but it is neat:


The real information to be found here, though, is inside the box itself:


What a litany!  OK, we might as well go through them one by one.  Patent number 1,700,255 is for a repeating pencil mechanism; it was applied for by Edward D. Feldman on October 23, 1922, but it wasn’t issued until January 29, 1929.  It was assigned to the Pencil Mechanism Corporation of New York:


Patent number 1,735,224 appears to have been added just to “pad” the patent pedigree here (note that the box specifically says it’s for the Eversharp Repeating Pencil). . . this patent is for John Wahl’s method of assembling fountain pens:


Patent 1,906,851 was issued to veteran Wahl (and later Riedell) inventor Hugo S. Hasselquist, who applied for something that kind of looks like an Eversharp repeater on February 23, 1922 . . . but it wasn’t issued for eleven years, finally issued on May 2, 1933:


As for Patent 1,916,199 . . . well hell, that’s just Robert Back’s patent for Everharp’s square lead:


Patent 1,967,484 is for a “magazine pencil,” but one of the screw drive sort, not the repeating kind.  It was applied for by Albert H. Stevenson on October 15, 1932 and was issued on July 24, 1934 - it was assigned to the Wahl Company:


You won’t find patent number 2,014,150 in my book... it’s for Albert H. Stenerson’s for an “Apparatus for molding objects of pyralin.”  Did I mention this is an aluminum-barreled pencil?


Design patent number 103,402 is close . .  It’s for Alfonso Iannelli’s design patent for the Coronet (actually Eversharp’s “Gold Filled Pencil”).  This one is a Coronet derivative, but obviously it doesn’t share much of anything in common with what’s patented:


And the same can be said for Iannelli’s alternate design for the Coronet, issued March 2, 1937 as Design Patent 103,403:


There is a reference to “Other Patents Pending” . . . perhaps they were referring to Iannelli’s design patent for the clip actually used on this pencil, which wasn’t issued until May 25, 1937 as Design Patent 104,686:


Or maybe not.  I think Eversharp just wanted to look like it had a lot of intellectual property in whatever they chose to stick in this box.

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