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It is always nice when someone decides to share. And when the thing shared is pen information, it is beyond nice: it’s a public service. We were browsing through our favourite host of online information, the Internet Archive and came across the fruits of some generous soul’s labour: high quality scans of vintage fountain pen & pencil documents. Catalogues and service manuals for some of the biggest names in the pen business. These are all public domain items, some in full colour, and represent a very valuable collection. The importance of this information cannot be understated. We can often pinpoint the age of a pen by it’s appearance in a catalogue. Or, we may be able to determine exactly which pen would have gone with which desk base. We have discovered the exact length of the neck ribbons originally supplied by Waterman. The list goes on, and that’s just the catalogues! The real treasure is in the service manuals. Detailed breakdowns of pens. Step-by-step instructions as to repair methods. Illustrations of tools designed & provided by the manufacturers. This information is a lifeline for old pens. So our thanks goes out to the kind soul who, rather than hoarding this information—or choosing to profit by selling it—chose to enrich us all. The documents are posted to archive.org in groupings, which are not chronological and are named a bit oddly. We have decided to list them a little more intuitively on our website, making it much easier to locate what you are specifically looking for: http://www.restorersart.com/?p=1245