I have known about these pencils for years, but it wasn’t until the last year or so before I finally acquired one.
All that I remember is that I caught this one “fishing with hand grenades” – that is, I bought a whole bunch of crap and this one happened to be in it. The clip reads “Cunningham Radio Tubes”:
That clip explains why these always seem to go for more money than I could justify paying. Collectibles that sit at the intersection of different disciplines tend to be valued more highly – in this case, pencil collectors and radio aficionados both chase them, and the radio guys are more likely to spend the bigger money. This example, like all of the others I have seen, is in a great lapis color with distinctive red bands, and on the side of the barrel, there’s also a metal plaque offering birthday greetings to “O.D.M.”
Cunningham Radio Tubes were marketed by Elmer T. Cunningham, who founded the Audio Tron Sales Company in San Francisco in 1915. Cunningham was a slippery character who fought off numerous patent infringement claims and went through a number of different business organizations – it is a fascinating history, but if I attempted to lay out the entire saga here (1) I doubt I would do the story justice, especially for any radio enthusiasts in the audience and (2) it would take me so far out into left field that I fear I would never get around to the story I’m telling today.
For our purposes, by 1931 the most recent incarnation of the Cunningham Radio Tubes business, by then going by “E.T. Cunningham, Inc.,” had been purchased by RCA. The distinctive letter C on the clip is drawn from Cunningham’s handwritten signature, as shown in this magazine advertisement published in 1925 or so:
I don’t believe the makers of Cunningham Radio Tubes got a wild hair and went into the pencil business (even though the Tri-Pen Company, makers of Triad pens and pencils, did exactly that). This is the only color and configuration in which I believe these are found, and if Cunningham had started a pencil business I’d expect to see more than one variation. I believe this is a specially commissioned advertising pencil, complete with a figural cap made to look like one of the company’s radio tubes.
My best guess as to who might have manufactured these pencils is Mabie Todd & Co., which used that same color celluloid, offered colored bands like these on some models, and Mabie Todd pencils share that slender front end and elongated metal tip. In the absence of any manufacturer’s marking, that is just my best guess.
That guess took a weird left turn recently. Unless Mabie Todd did some really weird stuff like what I’m about to show you, and I don’t think it did, Elmer Cunningham must have sourced pencils from other manufacturers, as well.
And who that manufacturer might have been is just fascinating . . .
Bob Speerbrecher (known by eBay shoppers as Speerbob) sometimes sends me pictures of things he is getting ready to list to ask for my input about what they are and what a reasonable price might be to ask. In this case, I told him not to bother listing it, because he had already found his buyer. Neither of us knew what a reasonable price for it might be, so we agreed that I’d find some extra pencils laying around to send him in trade (and that trade, I’ll tell you at some point, was an entire story all its own).
There are three weird things about this pencil I have to show you. The obvious first question concerns that cap - I don’t remember whether I made the connection while Bob and I were discussing the pencil by email, but by the time it arrived I understood exactly what it was:
Yes, Virginia . . . that’s Elmer’s distinctive handwriting all right. Although the pencil is not otherwise marked, the shape of the cap and the letter stamped on top of it are all I need to identify this as another Cunningham Radio Tubes advertising pencil.
I took another look at my lapis Cunningham Radio Tubes pencil because I didn’t recall that same treatment, but it does share that same letter C on top of the cap. It was so faintly stamped that I hadn’t noticed it before.
Speerbob’s Cunningham pencil is enigmatic. It is an early repeater pencil, and its resemblance to a Presto is both uncanny and just a little bit off.
The lead is significantly thicker on the Cunningham pencil, while all of the Presto repeaters I have seen have been uniformly equipped to accept ordinary 1.1 millimeter leads. If Presto was commissioned to make a special order pencil, in this case they made one that was really special. The oddities continue inside:
The internal workings of Presto repeaters are as consistent as the lead size they used, but this Cunningham repeater is built a little different, with a nose cone that screws into the threaded end of the barrel and different proportions of the brass inner parts. The Presto was derived from Abraham Pollak’s patent number 1,592,502 issued on July 13, 1926.
Pollak’s patent is famous because it was invalidated after the Gilfred Corporation (makers of the Everfeed, descended from the Presto) sued Eversharp for infringement of this very patent. I discussed the Gilfred v. Eversharp litigation in one of my earliest articles here, long since wiped from the Internet but surviving in print form - see “My Find of the Year” (December 31, 2011: Volume 1, page 63). The story was also reprised in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, at page 314.
In my opinion, this Cunningham pencil is so similar to a Presto repeater that they must have been made by the same manufacturer. At the time, with Pollak’s patent fresh on the books, anyone else copying his design this closely would have treaded in perilous waters indeed.
Unless . . .
I told you earlier there are three weird things about this pencil: the Cunningham connection and this pencil’s weird, close-but-not-exact relationship to the Presto are two of them. The third weird thing about it is that unusual clip:
I have never seen a clip like that on a Presto, but I have seen it . . . and so have you:
That’s our Cunningham posed alongside an early Ever Sharp made between 1913 and 1915. Charles Keeran’s earliest Ever Sharp pencils (“Eversharp” was two words in those days) were manufactured by George W. Heath & Co., and they sported clips patented by brothers George and Alfred Heath, who applied for patent 1,145,583 on June 12, 1912. Their patent was granted on July 6, 1915:
There is no question that what we see on this Cunningham pencil is this same patented Heath clip, with a ball added at its terminus. On Ever Sharp pencils, these are invariably stamped “Pat. App. For”; Keeran had hired the Wahl Adding Machine Company to take over production of his Ever Sharp in October 1915, and no Ever Sharp pencils are known to exist with the actual patent date stamped on the clips.
However, this Cunningham pencil has no markings on the clip, sending my thought process in an entirely new direction. In the mid-1920s, when this Cunningham pencil was likely made, Heath’s clip patent was still very much in force – unless someone else succeeded in court to invalidate it, but I haven’t seen any evidence for that. Maybe someone acquired the rights to the patent, or maybe someone deliberately copied it.
No love was lost between Heath and the makers of the Eversharp after production of the Ever Sharp was turned over to Wahl - Heath apparently refused to allow Wahl to license the clip, so Keeran and John Wahl scrambled to design new clips (first the spade or “trowel” clip, followed quickly by Wahl’s ubiquitous tombstone-shaped version). I have no idea why the Wahl Company would have any interest in acquiring Heath’s clip after coming up with its own.
Yet, I can’t shake this feeling that this is more than a coincidence. This is the second connection I’ve found between the Presto and the Eversharp: the Gilfred v. Eversharp litigation in 1940 is one, and this Presto-ish pencil’s use of the Heath clips Ever Sharp pencils once used makes two.
There may be three.
Back in 2013, I compared Presto’s earlier, metal repeating pencils to engine-turned Wahl Eversharps. I found them to be so similar that I theorized The Wahl Company may have been the actual manufacturer of those early metal Prestos. See “Presto! A Revelation!” (August 15, 2013: Volume 2, page 214).
There’s more. While Presto did not to my knowledge offer pencils using fatter leads like this Cunningham, The Wahl Company offered several models equipped for .075" leads, just like the Cunningham pencil. In addition, one repeating pencil with thick lead and a shaky Wahl connection also comes to mind:
This is the John C. Wahl “120,” which was not a product of the Wahl Company exactly, but by John C. Wahl, Inc. John was still connected with Wahl at the time the John C. Wahl 120 was made; for whatever reason the company that bore Wahl’s name did not pursue the project but apparently allowed him to produce the pencil on his own – see “Not Just to Show Off” (February 10, 2015: Volume 3, page 221).
Wahl’s patent for what I believe was the John C. Wahl 120 was applied for on June 19, 1939 and was issued on August 6, 1940 as number 2,210,845.
John Wahl’s design is a bit different from what we see on the Cunningham pencil, which in turn is a bit different from the Presto. While E.T. Cunningham, Inc. had been sold to RCA by the time the John C. Wahl 120 was introduced, RCA was still advertising radio tubes under the Cunningham name.
All I know at this point is that my head hurts.
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