Fountain Pen Chronology (5Th Release)

[coffe_cup]

Great work Simone, thank you! I would however like to point that using "Swan" as a company's name might be a little confused since there actually existed German's company Swan - also in pen&pencil business. So, if "Swan" in that Chronology is connected with Mabie Todd than I would suggest to change it to Mabie, Todd, because "Swan" is simply a pen model, together withe their "Blackbird" and "Jackdaw" and "Visofil".

 

Keep my fingers for your work and once again thank you.

 

Marta

[simp]

Hi Marta,

 

thanks for your appreciation and also for your notes. I'm making some correction on the wiki because you're right about the possible confusion, and it's not clear enough that Swan here means Mabie Todd and Co.

 

But I don't agree that Swan is just a model name, I got many ADs (like this one) for "Swan Pens" talking about totally different models, like Visofil Swan, Leverless Swan, etc. and at the same time talking also about Blackbird pens. So looking at whole company productions (I'm aware at the beginning things were different) I'm convinced that Swan is the main brand name used by Mabie,Todd and Co. for their first tier production and Blackbird is another brand name used by the company for its second tier production.

 

Many times a company produced pens under different brand names (like Mabie Todd for Swan and Blackbird, Aurora for Aurora, Olo and Asco, etc.). But we had also the same brand (like Kaweco, or Williamson) used/owned by different companies. In the most cases the company/brand relation is quite simple: there is a company and its brand and the name is almost the same (like for Parker or Sheaffer). Sometime things are far more complex than for Swan or Aurora, like the relation between The King, SAFIS, Radius and Astura, were at beginning there was a company and a brand with identical name, than after company and brands name changes we had the same company with a different name reusing its initial name as one of its brands.

 

When I started the wiki I had to make a choice on how to organize its contents. My choice was to use as "primary key" the brand names. I did this choice because it appeared more natural to me identify a pen by its brand name (Montblanc is much more clear than Simplo Filler GMBH). Brand name also tend to be more stable than company names. They are also shorter and easier to type.

 

But to have a complete information sometime I had to detail how a brand owner changed, other times to refer sub-brands like Blackbird to their main brand. Or to create connections between different brand names used by the same company in different times. It also means problems when I got different companies using the same brand name. I always solved this problem by using more detailed brand names. When no one has a prominence I just use a disambiguation page (like for Corona) using a more complete identification with also company full name for each different brand. If there is prominent one (like for Columbus) I used the simpler name for that one and a more complete name for the less relevant ones. I don't know about Swan Germany, so nothing is written about it in the wiki, but when I'll have to write something I'll do in this last way.

 

That's to explain why I did a choice that for sure is far from perfect. I'm fully aware that there are pro's and con's for this choice, but I'm still thinking I'm on the pro's side.

 

On the con's side there is the fact that an event list like the previous one can be confusing because sometime understanding which brand the event refers can be ambigous. But as I already explained what I published here is only a text translation. The chronology page on the Wiki (referenced above) has at least for each brand or model name a direct link to its Wiki page, were confusion is removed (or will be, if the page is incomplete) by a full explanation with references. I did not replicate that here because the list will have thousand of external references, and that not do nice for a forum.

 

Hope this can explain why I'm still going to use Swan.

 

Simone

[coffe_cup]

Well, I understand your point of view in a way, that's of course your hard work to gather all these information. However I cannot agree in all as for Mabie, Todd Company. You are right as for Swan is not exactly a model, but it's for sure not a brand. I think the most exact word would be "a line". And within the line there is quite many variations, but the point is that each (well, in like 99%) Mabie, Todd's fountain pen has an imprints that directed to the company's name. So there is Swan: Selfiler, Leverless, Visofil - Mabie, Todd etc., the same with Blackbird, Swallow (American LINE) and Jackdaw. So, because you use company's names in this Chronology I can agree completely to your arguments per using Swan instead Mabie Todd. I just think that each newbie, who might use this Chronology as a reference will be confused when find out that Swan is not company's name. That's all

 

Many regards,

Marta

[Flounder]

Oh, I've found an addition for the 1895 Wyvern entry.

 

"-- 1895 --

* Wyvern is founded by David Finburgh, Alec Finburgh in Leicester as The Finburgh Bros"

 

I recently bought an Orium 100 by the Wyvern Pen Co., and have started to read up a little more on Wyvern. There was a third Finburgh named Alfred, who left the company in 1929. His name appears in one of their patents, "Improvements in Propelling Pencils" (1926).

Edited February 18, 2015 by Flounder

[simp]

Tha

 

Oh, I've found an addition for the 1895 Wyvern entry.

 

"-- 1895 --

* Wyvern is founded by David Finburgh, Alec Finburgh in Leicester as The Finburgh Bros"

 

I recently bought an Orium 100 by the Wyvern Pen Co., and have started to read up a little more on Wyvern. There was a third Finburgh named Alfred, who left the company in 1929. His name appears in one of their patents, "Improvements in Propelling Pencils" (1926).

Thanks for the precious informations. I updated the Wyvern page of the wiki (still incomplete and untraslated), and I added the corrections you are pointing out to the chronology page. The updated one is here, now there are 1137 entries:

 

http://www.fountainpen.it/Chronology

 

If you have more infos about Wyvern I'd be happy add them.

 

Simone