Racing Stripes: The Origin Story

Many years ago, I wrote a series of articles exploring A.T. Cross after I photographed the late Jim Rouse’s collection at the 2012 Baltimore Show. The title of the article that included these was “A.T. Cross: Racing Stripes” (May 6, 2012: Volume 1, page 192).

Black enameled stripes on a metal pencil are usually a clear indication that Cross was the manufacturer. This example recently turned up in an online auction:

Yes, it is marked AXT as so many of the pencils along these lines are . . . but what caught my eye is what is stamped on the extender of this magic pencil.

“Design Pat. Ented. Mar. 25, 73.” I haven’t seen this on any other Cross pencil, and those of use who like Cross have long puzzled over whether there was ever any design patent, trademark, or other intellectual property claim protecting the “racing stripe” look, since that is such an easily recognizable feature of Cross pencils.

I pulled out American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910 – I was sure I would have remembered seeing this one, as I went through them one by one in the course of writing the book, but maybe I forgot . . . no, there are no design patents listed in there for March 25, 1873. That left no alternative but the old fashioned way, thumbing through patents issued on that date one by one until it turned up.

No wonder I missed design patent number 6,523 - it was filed only in a design patent category for “paper products.” I also wouldn’t have found it by searching Alonzo T. Cross by name: it was issued to Ephraim S. Johnson, perhaps best known for his “Pearl Patent” of December 5, 1871. The “Pearl Patent” was for a method of attaching distinctive pearl-slab barrels like the one at bottom in this group of E.S. Johnson pencils. 

Design patents protect the appearance rather than the function of an item, so Johnson’s patent 6,523 would have protected the black banding on this pencil too, even though these are hard rubber bands rather than painted. However, there’s no reference to Johnson’s 1873 racing stripes patent on this one - just the usual “Pearl Patent.” Perhaps he had yet to apply for his design patent for racing stripes.

The New York writing instrument manufacturers had a gentlemen’s agreement to share patents and pay each other royalties rather than litigate disputes over who invented what. As I was preparing to write this article, this next one appeared in an online auction – if my antennae hadn’t been up thinking about these at the time, I might have dismissed it as a common Cross magic pencil:

This one sure looks like a Cross, and comparing the front end to the first picture in this article, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that Cross made it . . . but not for its own account.

“Bates & B.,” as in Bates & Bacon (see “B Who?” on October 19, 2012: Volume 1, page 383), the Attleboro, Massachusetts jeweler responsible for a disastrous 1898 fire that originated – of all things – when lacquer caught fire in their factory. Bates & Bacon rebuilt after the fire, but the company was sold in 1901 to the Philadelphia Watch Case Company. 

Ephraim Johnson may have come up with the idea and held the design patent for the racing stripe idea, but it was Cross that would pick it up and run with it so successfully for decades after Johnson’s patent expired.