The Leadhead's Pencil Blog

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Always a Crowd Pleaser

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3; 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.

You knew I’d have to find something green to write about today. Paul Erano obliged me with this one at the Baltimore Show weekend before last:

This little phone dialer Gordon joins two others; the bronze and cream one (with the red veined and cream top) was featured here about two years ago (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/like-playing-lottery.html):

As I mentioned in my other articles, there were two versions of this clip. This example is the earlier sort, for which William Gordon, of Union, New Jersey, filed a patent application on April 3, 1930. It was granted as patent number 1,834,151 on December 1, 1931:

These clips were absolutely wicked. When you put it in your pocket, little fangs on the underside of the clip sank into the material and prevented the pencil from being removed . . . with a death grip:

In theory, when you push that wire bail downwards, the fangs retract to allow the pencil to be removed:

Whenever I show a Gordon off, people have a lot of questions about them. As I reread the last two articles I’ve written on the subject, there were a couple I haven’t answered here yet - so I’m jumping at the chance to show these off again. The first was what that tiny little logo is at the bottom of the clip, and now that I’m getting better with a camera I can show you:

It’s a “G” flanked by lions, with “Pat. Apl.” written below - probably a reference that these were made after April, 1930.

Second question: did they also make pens? Why yes they did:

There’s not much unusual about the black one – other than the Gordon clip, of course. It’s a conventional lever filler with a generic steel nib. The other example is a different story, however, featuring a “Gordon 14k” nib . . .

. . . as well as Gordon’s “improved” way of poking holes in your shirt pocket:

Gordon applied for the patent for the improved version on January 16, 1940. Patent number 2,268,116 was issued for this clip on December 30, 1940:

The only other example I’ve found of this clip is on a pencil . . .

. . . a very special pencil, in fact. Check out the imprint:

The company even turned out generic combos - combination pens and pencils:

If these two look familiar, you’re right: they are dead ringers for combos marked “Banker.” In fact, one of these (I don’t remember which one) arrived from an online auction with a broken barrel, so I swapped out the barrel from the next Banker combo I ran across with no trouble. There’s a funny sidebar with these: you might be able to see that the nickel-plated clip is a little different, and in more ways than one:

“Safer,” huh? No question it’s the same company – note the same Gordon crest at the lower end of the clip.

The last question about these I’ve got just half an answer: were there any other versions of this clip? The half an answer I can offer is that yes, there were – in theory:

Gordon’s first version of his clip was this gangly-looking thing, patent applied for on February 7, 1929 and issued as patent number 1,813,396 on July 7, 1931. I’ve still never seen one and I do hope that someday one surfaces. It shouldn’t be hard to spot if it does!

Monday, March 16, 2015

The Snake That Wasn't Wrapped Around a Pencil

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

David Nishimura and I were talking about this pencil the other day, and he agreed to let me share his pictures of it with you today:

At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss this one as a mismatch – looks like someone slipped a gold-filled snake accommodation clip onto an otherwise ordinary pencil. But I’ll tell you right now – that clip belongs on that pencil and it would be a crime to remove it and put it on something else!

First, let’s take a little closer look at that clip, because it’s got an unusual feature on the back side you won’t see too often on these.

“Pat. Jan 6 1914 / G.T.B.” The reference is for the design patent for the snake clip, number 45,102, issued to our man G.T.B. – George T. Byers, who applied for it on April 14, 1913:

As to the pencil itself, it looks like there might be traces of gold fill on parts of the barrel, suggesting that maybe that gold-filled clip didn’t look quite so out of place at one time – but what really has me convinced that these two were meant to be together is a tiny hallmark found near the crown;

“G.T.” nested inside the upper loop of a B, with “Co.” inside the lower loop. That has to be George T. Byers as well, and that fits this pencil - clip and all - into a very narrow and fascinating window in pencil history. The George T. Byers Co. was incorporated in early 1912 – remember that date, because it will be important later on in this article:

The patent date on the clip indicates that the pencil could not have been made earlier than January, 1914, and the George T. Byers Co. is found at 94 Murray Street in the 1915 Directory of Directors in the City of New York:

The company is listed at 94 Murray Street, with G.T.B. himself listed as President and Director. The following year, The Amerian Stationer reported in June, 1916 that Byers had associated with John E. Hayes, the former manager of The Aikin Lambert Company, to form Byers & Hayes.

Geyer’s Stationer reported on the company’s first anniversary celebration, identifying other officers of the company:

So who made the GTB pencil? It’s a rear drive number, and after I encouraged David to try to pull the top off, he reported that neither heat nor any other means at his disposal would cause the top to budge. Left only with evidence of a rear drive pencil, the top of which would not budge, I wondered if Cross or F.T. Pearce, the two companies most well known for their snake clips, might have made the Byers pencil.

When I followed up on that lead, I learned something I wasn’t expecting. Byers didn’t invent the snake clip. And was this pencil made by Pearce or Cross? Not no – hell no.

The case of Byers v. F.T. Pearce Co., 228 Fed. Rep. 720 (1915) is a fascinating glimpse into the mudwrestling that went on in the American pencil industry in the early twentieth century, and it’s a gold mine of information. Byers sued F. T. Pearce Co., which was interrelated with A.T. Cross, for infringement of his snake clip design patent – and the lawsuit backfired in the worst possible way.

The evidence at trial proved that the T.W. Lind Company of Providence had been making straight snake blanks (from its “die No. 932") beginning somewhere between 1890 and 1895, and that Byers’ first clips were fashioned simply by taking a Lind straight blank, “cutting off the fangs” and bending it around a pencil.

Pearce, on the other hand, first used snake clips in 1910 or 1911, and Lind began supplying snake blanks in quantity to Pearce by October 10, 1912 – Pearce had snake clips on the market by October 18, 1912 made from those blanks. The Court noted that Byers’ patent application wasn’t signed until April, 1913 and concluded “there is nothing in the patent record to indicate Byers took any steps to patent his design at any time before defendant’s design had become well advertised and well known to the trade.”

Oh, and Byers was his own worst enemy in court. He testified that he asked Lind for snake blanks in April, 1913 – the same month he filed his patent application -- “to get that very snake Pearce was using,” and that he then made dies from the Lind blanks and copied them exactly. The court wryly and correctly concluded, “[Byers’ suit] has for its object the appropriation of the defendant’s design for himself, and the exclusion of the defendant from its use, rather than the protection or use of the design shown in his letters patent.”

In the end, Byers was thumped in Court about as badly as one could be. Pearce was exonerated on the infringement claims, and the Court invalidated Byers’ patent in its entirety.

Now, to get back to that date I said to remember earlier: the incorporation of the George T. Byers Company in early 1912. The 1916 Byers and Hayes announcement says that Byers was well known in the pen industry for more than 25 years – but it says nothing about with whom, and neither does any other source I can find. Walter Sheaffer testified during his famous patent suit with C.E. Barrett that he once ordered parts from Byers, but there’s no indication as to when or in what capacity he was acting (as an independent salesman, on behalf of an employer or as the owner of his own concern).

But if you string the clues together, I think where Byers was is obvious:

1. F.T. Pearce first makes snake clips in late 1910 or early 1911;
2. George T. Byers incorporates his new company in early 1912;
3. Pearce begins large-scale production of snake clips in October 1912;
4. Byers orders snake blanks from Pearce’s supplier and files his design patent application in April 1913;
5. Byers waits until January 14, 1915 – after both Frank T. Pearce and his son, Aldridge G. Pearce had died – to file a lawsuit.

Call it a hunch if you want, but nobody likes snakes that much. This was no simple patent dispute: this was a grudge. Byers’ utter silence about where he was involved in the industry for a quarter century prior to forming Byers & Hayes, coupled with what appears to be an almost pathological compulsion to harass the F.T. Pearce Co. shortly after its principals die, just oozes of the story of a disgruntled former employee.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Off to the Races

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

There’s an old joke about a farmer who advertised a rooster for sale for a million dollars. When another farmer was later seen with that same rooster, he explained that he didn’t pay a million dollars - instead, he traded two hens worth half a million dollars each for it.

Today’s pencil wasn’t like that, really, but Richard Vacca has had it on his display for quite some time. The price had always been just a bit higher than what I could justify paying, so it wasn’t until the Baltimore show, when Richard needed some lead from my table, that I had enough hens to finally bring this rooster home:

“Horse pencil,” the tag read. No markings, trademarks or anything to go with this one. I got nothin’ except for an intriguing observation someone made when they noticed this unusual item being shown off: maybe it isn’t supposed to be a horse at all. Notice the sticker on the side?

A horse might seem random in connection with Washington, DC, but a donkey would make some sense – particularly if there’s a matching blue pencil out there with an elephant clinging to its barrel.

We’ll see what surfaces in the future. If this is supposed to be a donkey, it’s the worst depiction of one I think I’ve seen – it looks a lot more like a giraffe than a donkey (or a horse, for that matter). Imagine what that elephant will look like if the same designer depicted it!

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Two Things To Notice

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

This one slipped under the radar in an online auction a few weeks back.

The opening bid was hefty, so I don’t feel too guilty about the price I paid, but still – had the seller advertised it as an Eversharp pencil in the rare "flamingo" red, I never would have gotten it for that price. The reason I was interested in this one, even though I had one, was that I could tell from the proportionate size of the clip that this one would "size up" nicely with the other example I have:

Back on February 1, I posted an article about these Eversharp "purse pencils" and "clasp models," at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/02/only-eleven.html. The clasp models, which have twin bands such as these, were cataloged in "manly colors" like black, jade, black and pearl, brazilian green (green and bronze) and flamingo (ok, maybe the name isn’t so manly, but the color is relatively speaking). Ladies’ "purse pencils" were cataloged in all of these colors, but they were also listed in more obviously feminine pastel colors. All of the pastel colors have a single deco-style band rather than the double band:

Note in this picture that there’s large and small versions with double bands. I posed the question in that earlier article whether the smaller size with double bands were actually "purse pencils" or whether the size difference was eliminated from the line after the catalog was printed.

Until I picked up this flamingo, I had not run across the same colored pencil in this series in two sizes. If a small "manly colored" pencil turns up with a single deco band I might change my mind, but I’m inclined to believe at this point that the shorter flamingo pencil is a "purse pencil" and the larger is a "clasp model.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Reaching Waaaay Back

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

The earliest design for a mechanical pencil was patented in England in 1822 by Sampson Mordan and John Isaac Hawkins:

In the United States, the first patents for mechanical pencils were issued in 1829 - one in April to Joseph Saxton of Philadelphia, and another in July to William Jackson, also from Philly. Unfortunately, the 1836 patent office fire destroyed these documents, so all we know about these today comes from an index compiled from the charred remains of the office. Also destroyed was John Hague’s 1833 patent, Henry Withers’ 1834 patent for a pen/pencil combo, and Elwood Meeds’ 1835 patent.

Miraculously, John Bogardus’ 1833 patent was one of the few which survived the fire; in fact, it’s the earliest American patent for any writing instrument to have survived:

Next is Jacob Lownds in 1836, and then we have Thomas Addison of New York, whose patent number 736 was issued on May 10, 1838:

That eighth guy is as far back as I’ve been able to reach:

It practically takes a microscope to find the imprints on diminutive Victorian pencils like these:

This one has a lapis-like stone set in the crown:

Since then, I’ve managed to find two other Addisons, the most recent one coming from the Philadelphia show – the bottom one in this picture:

Unlike the "Addison’s Patent" example, these are marked simply "Addison":

I’m not inclined to think that these were made after the Addison patent expired in 1852 - that seems too late for these. Maybe they predate the patent - that would be exciting, but there’s no way to prove it.

It would be great to find marked examples of pencils made by each of these early manufacturers. Maybe they were unmarked, but maybe there are surviving examples out there - I’ve seen one example of a Lownds (number 7), but no trace of any of the others predating the Addisons.

Well, almost no trace . . .

This trade token, dated 1837, turned up at the DC show. It’s well documented among coin collectors, but I’d never seen one before. On the reverse are the words "S. Maycock & Co. / 35 City Hall Place N.Y. / Everpointed Pencil Case Manufacturers Saml. Maycock John Hague."

Hague was awarded two patents, the latter of which was issued after this token was minted, in 1839. The former, issued in 1833, was the third pencil patent issued in the U.S., and I think it would be odd if they were unmarked – since Maycock & Co. was minting tokens to advertise them!

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Symphonic Variations from Eversharp

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

The Eversharp Symphony was the company’s knee-jerk back-to-basics pen, introduced in 1948 on the heels of the ballpoint pen fiasco that mortally wounded the company. It didn’t sell well enough to put the company back on solid footing. Viewed from a collector’s standpoint more than half a century later, the pens were OK. The pencils, on the other hand, were in my opinion more well built than any others the company made.

Most of the time, the Symphonies you’ll find are of the "wedding band" Symphony or the wider band "Symphony Deluxe," with the occasional "Golden Symphony" showing up. I ran an article here awhile ago running down these variations (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/08/eversharps-symphonies.html):

Lately, I’ve found three examples of the Eversharp Symphony which aren’t the usual fare. A couple weeks ago Mike Little sent me an email asking if I had interest in this one:

Why yes, I said. Yes I do. This is one of the original Raymond Loewy-designed Symphonies, as the line was originally unveiled in 1948; and it’s in much better shape than the one I illustrated in the last article:

Note that like the Loewy model I illustrated in that last article, the mechanism protrudes from the tip – an indication that this one also contains Charles Lovejoy’s 1944 patented mechanism (Lovejoy’s patent was assigned to the Moore Pen Company).

This one has all the design features as they were originally introduced, including the two-faceted clip, the brushed finish and that great detailing on the button:

That price sticker doesn’t break my heart, either!

This next one I've got to show you came out of Sam Knechel’s collection:

Jim Mamoulides shows this one alongside the companion fountain pen over at penhero.com, and he calls this a "second generation" Symphony from 1949. The pen still had Loewy’s "slipper cap" design, but note that on the pencil, the prongs of the mechanism no longer protrude from the tip – Eversharp had reverted to the same mechanism the company used on the Skyline series. Also, the clip has been rounded off and the top button has been switched to what Jim calls a "bullet" design:

The ones I've shown you so far don’t turn up that often, but they are well documented. This last one is a different story:

The Eversharp "Desk Pac" was one of the really weird ideas Eversharp rolled out in the 1950s. Eversharp only advertised it once, for $12.75 in the December 2, 1950 edition of The Saturday Evening Post:

By November, 1951, The Temple Company of Philadelphia, a clearance house, was wholesaling these at the discounted price of $7.40, with samples available for $2.90:

You never see these, and this set is in the box with paperwork:

The Christmassy label with the original $12.75 price squares with the original December 1950 advertisement. Note that the 703/1703 model numbers line up with the wide band "Symphony Deluxe" model, but there’s a curious "mm red" note handwritten on the model sticker. Could that mean "inspected by mm," or something else? The reason I ask is because what’s inside is no Symphony Deluxe like I’ve ever seen:

It is red, and the shape of the pen and pencil is consistent with a later Symphony, but these are all plastic – with ribbing where you’d expect to see a band. And to top things off, this is an advertisement set for the "Paul D. Osborn Desk Co.":

An Eversharp pencil variant I’ve never heard of, packaged in a set I’d only heard of but never seen? Now there’s a Symphony that’s truly music to my ears!