Worth a Second Look

In yesterday’s installment, I introduced a fountain pen marked “Worth” with a nib marked “Keystone.” It was the first of several dominoes to fall connecting different producers.

That tied nicely into a discussion about who made pens and pencils marked “Keystone,” but with an underlying assumption that the nib is original to the pen. I agree that sometimes people put too much weight on what nib is in a particular pen, since nibs can be and often were switched out by repairmen over the last century.

In this case, I fully believe the nib is original. First, this Worth pen appears to have been made by the Eagle Pencil Company, given its similarity to other known Eagle pens:

Second, the word “Keystone” was a registered trademark owned by the Blaisdell Pencil Company. Blaisdell, by the time the trademark was applied for, was controlled by the Berolzheimer family, which also owned the Eagle Pencil Company.

All roads leading from Worth and Blaisdell point to Eagle. As I mentioned earlier, when I bought that Worth pen I didn’t even check to see if there was a nib in it – it was cheap, and the fact that I suspected it was Eagle-made without even removing the cap was all that I needed to add some fascinating context to one of our most celebrated pen history. A Keystone/Blaisdell/Eagle connection adds even more fuel to that fire. 

The Worth Featherweight Pen Company is best known today for being the loser in Walter Sheaffer’s landmark patent infringement case over Sheaffer’s design patents for the Sheaffer Balance. Daniel Kirchheimer wrote an excellent article on the litigation titled “Featherweight vs. Heavyweight” (posted here). The case is notable for the information in trial transcripts detailing the development and history of the Sheaffer Balance. 

Here at the blog, the Worth Featherweight Pen Company last made an appearance in “Worth Something” (July 24, 2021: Volume 7, page 282). In that piece, the evidence was presented that Nathaniel Worth, who tried to secretly sell his shares in New Diamond Point Pen Company to Marx Finstone’s Eclipse Pen Company, was the man behind the Worth Featherweight Pen Company. Both were represented by the same attorney, Charles Greenwald.

“One could argue that it’s a coincidence that there were two guys named Worth [Nathaniel and his brother], and a pen company called the ‘Worth Featherweight Pen Company,’” I wrote. “Slimmer still is the possibility that all were in New York City, and that Nathaniel Worth had been recently relieved of his duties at another pen company shortly before this one emerges.

“But could it still be a coincidence now that we know the same New York lawyer was representing both Nathaniel Worth and the Worth Featherweight Pen Company, in two complex cases, both of which would likely consume nearly all of his time? No, I believe this eliminates all reasonable doubt.” 

OK, so now we have Diamond Point, Eclipse, Keystone, Eagle, Blaisdell, and Worth in the mix. Hang in there . . . it sorts itself out.

I took a more significant dive into Sheaffer’s litigation to protect its design patents for the Balance in A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils (2023). “Worth was an ideal defendant for Sheaffer to attack,” I wrote on page 40, “since it was a small concern with limited resources with which to defend itself. Worth’s conduct was also intentional and flagrant: the company even marketed its pens as the ‘Safer Fountain Pen,’ and one of Sheaffer’s undercover operatives reported that Worth’s president admitted the name was chosen because the name sounded like ‘Sheaffer.’ Predictably, Sheaffer outgunned this tiny adversary, resulting in a decision upholding the validity of Sheaffer’s design patents.”

Once that judgment was secured, Sheaffer set his sights on the Eagle Pencil Company, whose products had been introduced in evidence during the Worth litigation for the proposition that Eagle had been making streamlined writing instruments like the Balance since Walter Sheaffer was in diapers. In this instance, though, Eagle was one of the more blatant of the copycats, offering metal pencils and pens painted in a faux black and pearl, shaped exactly the same as the Balance. A couple examples turned up in Susan Wirth’s belongings, in this tray of “Susie’s Eagles” with which John Martenson parted:

The Balance-like offerings in this tray filled out what I already had in the collection nicely:

The Court was quick to mete out justice against Eagle: the Court issued a preliminary injunction against Eagle as well, in a published decision filed on December 3, 1931 (W.A. Sheaffer Pen Co. v. Eagle Pencil Co., 55 F.2d 420 (S.D.N.Y. 1931)). As a result, Eagle was forced to modify the shape of some of its products and add a disclaimer to the company’s 1931-1932 catalog:

Now let’s take a step back for a second and take a breath. Yes, it makes sense that Sheaffer would first target a weaker opponent to get a favorable precedent set that his Balance patents were valid. Yes, it also makes sense that Eagle would be in Sheaffer’s sights, since Eagle was one of the more blatant copycats.

With the additional insight that Eagle was supplying the Worth Featherweight Pen Company with at least some of the company’s products, it makes even more sense. After all, if Eagle was supplying one competitor with Balance-shaped products, taking down Eagle would knock out both a direct competitor as well as a supplier.

Which got me to thinking . . . in the Field Guide I brought up another competitor who was restrained by the Courts: the Pick Pen Company of Cincinnati, against whom Sheaffer won a preliminary injunction on December 2, 1931 – the day before the injunction was issued against Eagle.

I wrote up the history of the Pick Pen Company in great detail in Volume 7 (see “Nobody’s Luck Is That Band” on May 5, 2021: Volume 7, page 88). Now that we know that Worth might have been targeted by Sheaffer because Worth was a customer of the Eagle Pencil Company, I wonder: does that suggest Eagle actually made this Pick pen?

Maybe . . . it does share the general lines of Eagle products, and Pick didn’t do much with streamlining. It is an interesting hypothesis. With my head about to explode with adding yet another company into this story, I’ll wait to circle back on that point until I have more evidence.

Now to bring this long, complicated story full circle. This all started with a discussion of James Kelley’s Keystone Banker. In those earlier articles I included this image of three combination pens and pencils, all fitted with Gordon’s “fanged” clips:

These clips are marked “Banker,” “Safer,” and “Gordon.” Gordon is easy to explain: the fanged clips were patented by William Gordon of Union, New Jersey. There were three patented versions of the clip (all three patents were discussed in “Always a Crowd Pleaser” on March 17, 2015: Volume 3, page 263). I’ve never seen the earliest version of Gordon’s clip in the flesh, and I’ve only found one example of the third. All of the other examples I have found are the second incarnation, the patent application for which was filed April 3, 1930 and granted as patent number 1,834,151 on December 1, 1931. 

As for the Banker, these combos were produced (not manufactured) by our friend James Kelley. But what of the “Safer?” Was that meant to comfort the public into believing a writing instrument with built-in spikes wouldn’t harm your shirt pocket? Perhaps . . . but I doubt it.

In Daniel Kirchheimer’s “Featherweight v. Heavyweight” article, he discussed how Walter Sheaffer’s undercover detectives had learned that the Worth Featherweight Pen Company sold pens under the name “Safer” – not because they were less dangerous, but because “Safer” sounded a lot like “Sheaffer.” Daniel included this image of a Worth box, which was introduced at evidence during the trial:

I’m not sure how all of this fits together, and the only thing of which I am certain is that James Kelley and Nathaniel Worth both sourced these combination writing instruments with Gordon patent clips from the same supplier. Was that supplier Eagle? Maybe. Were Nathaniel Worth and James Kelley involved in some way other than buying stock from the same supplier? Maybe.

Good journalists, I was taught forty years ago, do not tell you what to think – they tell you what to think about.