Three New Eagles

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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

The Eagle Pencil Company is another niche that will never bore you.   A year ago John Hall had two of these at the Baltimore show:

It works just like one of the old Eagle Automatic Stop Gauge pencils . . . but externally, it looks just like the Eagle Spear:

This is no Spear though . . . it is the number 805 “Prestomatic”:

So why do both the Spear and the Prestomatic share the same patent date of September 22, 1908?

The answer is found in American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910 (a great book, really – you can get it at https://www.legendaryleadcompany.com/store/p14/American_Writing_Instrument_Patents_1799-1910.html).  Two design patents were issued on that date, both assigned to the Eagle Pencil Company.  The first, number 39,560, is arguably for the least inspiring design of all time, issued to Harry Heymann:

The second design patent was issued to veteran Eagle inventor Claes Boman, and it never made sense to me why a second patent would be issued for something so similar, with just a bit more detailing on the end:

With the Prestomatic in hand, though, it makes sense.  Heymann’s patent was issued for the Spear, while Boman’s was issued for the Prestomatic.  Mystery solved.

The other two Eagles I have to show you today turned up in one lot online, and I had never seen either one before:

Both are leadholders - the knobs at the top turn one way to release the lead and the other way to grip it.  Behold, the Eagle No. 527 “Clutch”:

and the No. 528 “Short Stop”:

Hoffman and Boman Ride Again

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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

The Eagle Pencil Company is one of my favorite manufacturers to collect, since the dizzying array of innovations the company introduced – some great, some just plain goofy – provides endless variety.

One of the best ideas the company had was that of the “Automatic” or “Stop Gauge” pencil, first patented by Joseph Hoffman in 1879 and later refined in 1885 by Claes Boman.  These thick lead pencils, which merely held lead in a chuck that would be released by the press of a button on the aft end, are the great granddaddy of all techincal leadholders and all modern “clutch” style pencils,

There were also later incarnations of the Stop Gauge, such as these:

These things are like an elephant hiding in the corner.  Although they are much larger than most pencils, for some reason they just don’t jump out at you as much as you would expect, and it wasn’t until just a couple years ago that I know they existed.  At the tip end you’ll find the characteristc thick lead and gripping jaws:

On the cap, they are identified as the “Clutch” No. 692 – and with a more recent patent number of 2,134,570:

The patent number refers to Joseph Meilner’s pencil, for which he applied for a patent on May 17, 1935 and which was granted on October 25, 1938:

I’ve read and reread the text of the patent, and I honestly can’t tell what was new and exciting about Meilner’s incarnation of the pencil.  Even the sharpener built into the cap he states is just an optional bit, and nothing is claimed as patentable for that feature (besides, it was opted out in all three of my examples). 

There was another less robust version of the Stop Gauge , too: the model number 10, which more closely resembled its ancestor.  There’s one shown amongst the early Eagles pictured on page 45 of The Catalogue, It’s the gold colored one near the middle:

I don’t think this one belongs in the company of Victorian Eagles, though.  While the design is older (notwithstanding the “Pat. Pend.” imprint), the No.10 probably dates to the 1930s – this example turned up on a store card with an Eagle logo dating to the Depression, and referring to it on the card only as the Eagle “Prestop”:

Note also the indication that the Prestop took a four-inch lead, which also places this example squarely in the “Square 4" era. 

Lastly, along the lines of the Clutch and the No. 10 is this odd duck:

This one shares the same overall appearance of the No. 10 and uses a thicker lead like the “Clutch,” but this has a nose drive twist mechanism:

Chris Egolf turned this one up for me.  It’s an Eagle “75-60,” and it apparently cost twenty cents, twice the price of the number 10:

The numbering is significant . . . or maybe it isn’t.  In its earliest incarnation, the Stop Gauge was sometimes referred to as the “Automatic.”   In the the thirties, Eagle applied the name to a spiral drive plastic pencils - with a 75- model number, and the “Giant Automatics,” the large souvenir pencils with a conventional nose drive stuck in the front end, which all share a 75- prefix as well.