Three Interesting Watermans - Part Three

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And what about that bottom one in this picture?

If Waterman dropped the metal tip from the Model 25 sometime after late 1924, what’s up with the extra long metal tip here?  Simple.  This isn’t a Model 25.  Note the two bands on the top cap, and a nose section which is markedly more slender:

The imprint adds further clues:

There’s our 1924 patent date, but added below the typical imprint is the stylized word “Ripple.”  The earliest reference I can find to Waterman’s use of the word “Ripple” in connection with what it previously called mottled hard rubber, was in this advertisement, from the Oakland (California) Tribune on February 16, 1926:

But one thing is missing from this advertisement: a picture of the pencil, which would tell us whether Waterman was introducing the longer, more graceful nose section or the stubbier version.  Later advertisements continue to show the stubbier tips:

At the end of 1928, when Waterman added colors to the Ripple lineup - blue, olive and pink - the advertisements continue to show a stubby tip  – with a metal tip, suggesting the colored ripple pencils took a slightly different evolutionary path than the model 25:

This advertisement, from December, 1928, shows a pencil which mostly matches the trim configuration on this pencil; but the nose remains stubby (assuming the artwork is correct):

And this one, from August, 1929, is fascinating: it touts that “nothing can take the place of rubber” scant months before the introduction of the celluloid Patrician line, and there’s our pencil – with a short and stubby nose, and not called a model 25.  The pen is a number 94, and the pencil is referred to in this ad as a number 95:

In December, 1930, this advertisement appeared in the Winnipeg Tribune, showing our pencil in its current incarnation, with the long, slender nose and two trim bands at the top end.  By this time, it was referred to as model 0727N (meaning this was now referred to as the model 27 - that's an 07 prefix denoting gold filled trim, an N to denote a narrow band):

Conservative to the end, Waterman continued to offer the “ripple rubber pencil” at least through 1933, when it last appeared in the company’s catalog (page from the Pen Collectors of America’s copy):

By this time, the “N” denoting a narrow band was dropped, suggesting that there was only one trim configuration still in production.

Three Interesting Watermans - Part Two

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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Today let’s have a closer look at the middle example in this shot of interesting Watermans:

This one sports a plain Waterman’s clip:

So, if my theory continues to hold, you would expect to see a “patent applied for” imprint above the clip, and that’s exactly what it has – but in addition to something else:

Patent applied for on the front, definitely made in USA – but sporting patent number 226,746 on the back side.  A six-digit patent number can’t be an American patent in the 1924ish range, and this one isn’t: Waterman also patented Larsen’s pencil in Great Britain, where it was issued just a little earlier, on June 23, 1924.  That means this one was made in the US, for export to England, between June and October, 1924.  That conclusion is confirmed by some interesting markings on the center band:

The “FDW,” as best we know, stands for Frank D. Waterman, who was running the show by 1924.  The other markings indicate the band is 9 karat, and made for export to Britain.  As for the interesting bit at the nose:

Originally, this was three gold bands – it had 1 ½ when I bought it, but the remainder of one of the other bands fell off and went missing on the ride home. Were all the Waterman 25s made for the British market made to include these, or is this something unusual?  I don’t know yet – this is the first one I’ve looked at closely.

Three Interesting Watermans, Part One

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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With yesterday’s article concerning the development of the Waterman larger sized pencils in the back of your mind, have a look at these three oversized Waterman pencils which turned up at the Michigan Pen Show last month:

Note that the top example has a “Clip Cap” globe clip.

Note also the plain hard rubber tip on that top one, while the middle one has the short metal bit on the end shown in the 1925 catalog.  The bottom one . . . well, we’ll get to that one:

If my theory is correct, that the Model 25s started out with a metal tip which was later deleted, and the plain Waterman’s clip was switched out in favor of a Clip-Cap in late 1924, just as the 1925 catalog artwork was approved, you’d expect to see a 1924 patent date on the mottled example, and that is exactly what’s there  – faintly – just below a  badly chewed up 14k band:

That badly chewed up band allows us to date the pencil even more precisely than “post 1924.”  On Valentines Day, 1927, Waterman took out newspaper advertisements in several papers to announce the Waterman “Aristocrat” set, commemorating Waterman’s 44th anniversary, which had special 14k gold trim:

But note: the advertisement clearly shows a metal tip on the pencil, which is absent from my pencil.

Since this pencil was a special anniversary edition, and the only advertisements for it were published in February, 1927, I think it’s safe to assume these were made in one run within a relatively short time, early in 1927.  It would be interesting to see other examples to determine whether any were made with metal tips; were I a betting man, I’d say they probably weren’t, and the tip shown in the advertisement is either artistic license in the illustration (modifiying existing artwork to include the fancy cap) or a drawing made up in anticipation of the model’s release, before the decision was made to drop the tip.

I like the second alternative.  I think the metal tip was dropped from the Model 25 around the beginning of 1927.

"So Great the Vogue"

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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The L.E. Waterman Company hated pencils.  The company resisted producing them longer than any of the other members of the Big Four fraternity, even claiming in one instance that writing with a pencil might even irreparably ruin one’s penmanship. 

Aikin Lambert, which had been manufacturing nibs for Waterman since almost the beginning of the latter’s rise, also made pencils.  As Aikin Lambert’s biggest customer became more influential, by 1914 it had become a Waterman subsidiary.  That’s why Aikin Lambert pencils from the teens sport riveted clips using Ferris’ 1905 patent – the same clip, with a little curl on the end, as that used on Waterman’s pens.

By 1919, Waterman was starting to feel the pinch of competition from newcomers Sheaffer and Wahl Eversharp, which had come literally out of nowhere to claim a significant market share thanks, in part, to the pencils they offered to accompany their pens.  The company’s catalog from 1919 is the first I know of in which Waterman offered pen and pencil sets – but the company made it clear that it was Aikin Lambert which made the lowly pencil part of the duo (this page is from the Pen Collectors of America’s online reference library):

David Nishimura wrote a great article about the development of Waterman's first pencils, the direct link to which is http://vintagepensblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-first-waterman-pencils.html. in which he provides citations to the first glimmers of Waterman's pencil production, beginning with hints in late 1921 and culminating with an announcement of the company's new pencil lines for general release in late 1922.  What I believe were the earliest pencils were those nicknamed "left-handed pencils" -- the mechanism can be advanced either by the cap or by the nose, so while the cap advances the lead the way you would expect, the nose operates the mechanism in reverse; turning the nose to the right advances it, rather than to the left.  Here's what they look like:

The "left handed Watermans" appear to have been quickly abandoned, for reasons which further research will hopefully reveal.

The next readily available resource documenting Waterman's pencil offerings as of this writing is the company's 1925 catalog at the PCA's online library, which indicates that even three years after Waterman's pencils were introduced, the company only doing so almost against its will:

“It is because there is so strong a vogue today for pens and pencils that match that we make a pencil to match every pen we make.”   Now that’s salesmanship: we’re offering pencils because you want them, not because we want to.  Nearly all the pencils offered by Waterman after the abandonment of the "left handed Watermans" until the introduction of the Patrician in 1929 were built the same way, as illustrated in the 1925 catalog:

Yeah, sorry about the ugly watermark . . . don’t get me started.   .Anyway . . .

The design for the pencil was patented by Gabriel Larsen, his first patent for Waterman, applied for on May 17, 1922 and issued as number 1,511,225 on October 14, 1924:

At my old Mechanical Pencil Museum website, I commented back in 2009 that I thought Larsen’s pencil entered production in 1923, but I don’t know where I got that.  Suffice to say that it was probably introduced sometime after May, 1922, given the large number of surviving examples marked “patent applied for.”

Waterman had a thin model pencil (the 21), a thin short model (the 21V, for “vest pocket”), and a fat model (number 25) advertised in the 1925 catalog.  (The model 26 checking pencils were also offered – they were discussed here at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/07/does-26-round-up-to-94.html).  This page illustrated the big boys:

Each of these were referred to as the model 0725N, meaning it was a model 25 with gold filled trim (the “07" trim code) and a narrow band (that’s the “N”); I’ll give you a full rundown on the model numbering system for Waterman pencils later.  These are the most commonly encountered Waterman oversized pencils, which makes sense since the catalog indicated that they were supposed to match the whole line of 018 series pens.

Note three things about this page, which are important to the rest of this article: (1) this was after Larsen’s patent was issued in 1924; (2) note the “clip-cap” clips; and (3) note the metal tips on the end.  Now let’s compare these to the ones I’ve had in my collection for years:

Note the metal tips and the same thin bands, but there’s something different here:

These clips say only “Waterman’s,” – no clip-caps here – and all three are marked “Pat. Appl For,” suggesting pre-1924 production (before the catalog was published).   Recently my friend Joe Nemecek offered to me one of his duplicates, a cardinal example:

I almost passed on this one – I already have one, I thought – but then I compared it to the one in my collection, and I noticed some subtle differences:

There’s no metal tip on the one Joe offered up:

And this one has a Clip-Cap and an imprint sporting the 1924 patent date instead of patent applied for:

So that’s four examples, none of which match what’s shown in the 1925 catalog.  I do have this fifth one, though:

Metal tip, clip cap:

And a 1924 patent date:

That’s a dead ringer for what the catalog shows – one out of five.

If Waterman was consistent in how they put these together, and if parts were not used with patent applied for imprints after the patent was issued in 1924, my working theory is that the Model 25 was introduced (sometime before 1924) with plain Waterman’s clips and metal tips on the nose cone.  In late 1924, just as Larsen’s patent was issued and the barrel imprints were changed to reflect the October, 1924 patent date, Waterman added the Clip-Cap clips to the pencils and then, after the catalog was published, Waterman dropped the metal tip.

If that’s true, that is exactly backwards from how I always thought the model 25s developed.