The Friendly Reminder

Many of the pictures in my “to be written about” folder were taken so long ago, and they have spent so much time living rent-free in my head, that I’m sure that I had already written about them . . . so sure that when one of Gabriel’s care packages had a Seth Crocker pencil in it, I was convinced I would be updating a previous article and picking up where I left off.

I was absent longer than expected to write the Sheaffer and Eversharp books, and a few years later, I had circled back around to find good and bad news. Bad news first: Gabriel’s example of the Seth Crocker is a duplicate of an example I have: it’s a black two-band example, just like the one at top here:

No worries about that, though – should a Seth Crocker limp into the museum in a really wild color but missing a thing or two, it will be good to have one that can share custody of its bits and pieces. As I compared it to what was in my photo archive, I stumble across some pictures of another one, which David Nishimura had brought to the Baltimore show several years ago.

The good news was that Gabriel’s example nudged me to take a few do-over shots of this one; what was in my head never made it onto paper because the photos I shot did not turn out as well as I hoped, and with those updated pictures I can push this one across the finish line. The clip on this one is marked “Sears” rather than the usual Seth Crocker:

I believe “Sears” is a reference to Seth Chilton Crocker’s father, Seth Sears Crocker, owner of the original Crocker Pen Company – a happy coincidence that likely didn’t sit well with Sears, Roebuck & Co. See “It Isn’t a Race, But If It Were . . .” (June 14, 2020: Volume 6, page 185). Joe Nemecek has a Sears-marked Seth Crocker, shown on page 187, but his has the typical three narrow trim bands. This Sears has a little something extra:

Despite the deluxe trim, there’s no imprint on the barrel, but removing the nose reveals that it has the same mechanism inside.

The Seth Crocker pencil was designed by Ambrose Fleming: his patent 1,886,333 was applied for on May 12, 1931 and was issued November 1, 1932; see “The Patent Book Passes a Harsh Test (November 4, 2014: Volume 3, page 84):

Page one of the drawings isn’t particularly helpful, but there’s a couple figures on page two of the specifications which clearly show the Seth Crocker’s unique internal lead tray.

At that same Baltimore Show, George Rimakis tracked me down with a little pile of goodies he’d set aside for me, including these two:

At the time, I had recently written about the “Pencil Knife” in “What They Looked Like and Why Most Don’t” (May 30, 2021), and I thought these might be a little less “knifey” version, with that distinctive lower trim band.

Alas, there isn’t enough there to connect the two - the placement of the trim band is all that the two have in common. On the Pencil Knife, that’s just the joint where the top pulls off, and it has a conventional nose-drive mechanism. George’s pencils, however, have tips that unscrew to reveal something far less conventional.

Hmm . . . a nose that unscrews to reveal a weird mechanism . . . 

On a hunch, I browsed American Writing Instrument Patents Volume 2: 1911-1945 to see if Ambrose Fleming designed any other pencils. He’s credited with nine inventions in the book for patents issued between 1921 and 1932, with the Seth Crocker pencil being the last of them. One of his earlier inventions was patent 1,674,357, applied for on March 22, 1926 and issued on June 19, 1928.

That’s it.

There’s no markings on George’s pencils - no branding and no “Pat. Pend.” or other information. In 1928, when Fleming’s earlier patent was issued, the Crocker/Chilton saga was at a transition point: the Crocker Pen Manufacturing Company (in its later years, under the direction of the colorful George Zain) had failed in 1926. The Chilton Pen Company was formed in 1926 by Seth Chilton Crocker; his father Seth Sears Crocker died in 1927.  Seth Chilton Crocker was then given the boot from Chilton in 1932, at which time he formed the Seth Crocker Pen Company. See “Three Missing Years” (June 15, 2020: Volume 6, page 187).

That is a lot going on in a few short years. This story continues to inch forward one step at a time, and now I would like to learn more about our man Ambrose Fleming: no, I don’t think he’s the same guy as John Ambrose Fleming, the English inventor, and I don’t know what if any relationship our Ambrose had to Seth Chilton Crocker, Chilton, or the Seth Crocker Pen Company. 

Are George’s pencils “Seth Crocker” pencils? It’s possible, but I don’t think so, because they are not so marked. Maybe he was an independent inventor who sold his last invention to Seth Crocker, and maybe there is more to be learned about the story.