For My Amusement

This article has been included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 7, now available here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy the article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

When Michael Krut sent me the black and pearl Eversharp Doric I wrote about a few weeks ago (see "My First Love"), he included a few stowaways – bits and pieces of things that he thought I might enjoy, just for fun.  One of them was this:

My initial thought when it popped out of the box was that it might be an unusual smaller version of the Autopoint Model 466 – from that awkward transitional period in 1931 when the noses had been changed from the long metal ones to Bakelite, but before the top end was redesigned to include a matching plastic cap.

These Autopoint transitional models are tougher to find, even though they were offered in Autopoint catalogs through 1936 – for more information, see A Century of Autopoint, page 112.

I’ve never seen a smaller model, and this one looked like it had a replacement cap, from a Dur-O-Lite.  Good luck finding the right cap, I thought . . .

But then I noticed the imprint, and this little guy went from amusing to fascinating faster than you can say Dur-O-Lite or Autopoint:  Keen Point (only two syllables – that’s why it’s faster).  

The Keen Point was also discussed in A Century of Autopoint, due to its connection with the inventor of the original Autopoint, Charles Keeran (see Chapter 7 in A Century of Autopoint).  After Keeran’s second ouster from Autopoint, he engaged in a series of associations with other manufacturers.  In 1927, he filed his trademark registration for the Keen-Point logo:

The earliest Keen Points were made by Dur-O-Lite, as illustrated on page 83:

On that same page, I illustrated a Dur-O-Lite (top) compared to a Keen Point (bottom) with their noses removed, to show how they are different inside.  As I noted in the book, very few Dur-O-Lites, probably very late production during the flattop series, share that same barrel end treatment:

This new example shares similar barrel end treatment:

As I mentioned when I restarted this blog, I’m writing these articles while I’m taking a break from writing a book about the history of Dur-O-Lite titled Dur-O-Lite: The Clandestine Company.   I delve more heavily into the Keen Point in its pages, and I now know that by the time Dur-O-Lite relocated from Chicago to Sycamore, Illinois in 1931, the mark no longer belonged to Charles Keeran.  It had been acquired by Dur-O-Lite, which was by that time marketing a lower priced “Keen-Point” line of pencils.

The cap on Michael’s pencil is probably correct: Dur-O-Lite did offer a thin model during the flattop era which used that cap.  Here’s an image showing that same cap on a slim model found in the Dur-O-Lite factory archive which will be included in the new book:

What I didn’t know until Michael’s example came along was that there were demi-sized thin models, and that the Keen Point changed out the tips from metal to plastic, then the cap.   All the other examples I’ve found have either both metal ends, or both plastic.  

I’m sure that Autopoint inspired Dur-O-Lite to change out the tips.  However, given that this is the only Keen Point I’ve ever seen which didn’t change out the top end as well, I’m wondering if Dur-O-Lite didn’t inspire Autopoint to change out the caps in return.