Pens For Sale 1918

[AAAndrew]

Two pages of the May, 1918 catalog for Chicago stationers Cameron, Amberg & Co.

 

 

 

Oh, and I guess they were selling fountain pens as well.

 

[AAAndrew]

Anyone interested in seeing the inks, inkwells, pencils, ...?

[Barry Gabay]

Inks, please. Absolutely! All of it is interesting and educational. Thank you for the posting of nibs and holders, er. . . I mean, pens and pen holders.

[Tasmith]

Yes!

[markh]

I love the inventiveness of the nibs. While I'm sure there were some performance or design differences, I think these were an example of finding the thinnest of differentiation, creating an interesting name, and using it to market the pen (nib).

 

Judges quill, probate pen, court house nib, Barrister.....

Was there a special pen for probate cases??

 

The republican nib, music nib, poets nib (colored purple .. automatic rhyming??)

 

Nibs called Homer, Success, Vassar Stub (though I think in 1918 a woman would be looked down on for using a stub anything, including a pen); Congressional, "Fine point; for schools and careful writers", droop point.....

 

My favorite is the Proboscular. Favorite name - unfortunately no image of this nib, so I'm left wondering whose nose it resembled.

 

Nib makers were obviously had a lot more imagination then the today's crop of boring, overly jeweled and decorated fountain pen manufacturers.

 

 

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[AAAndrew]

Inks and ink wells

 

 

 

[AAAndrew]

More Inkwells

 

 

 

[nibfiend]

I love inkwells!

[Tasmith]

Higgins bottles still look about the same.

[rwilsonedn]

Fascinating. I wonder if copying ink was for mimeograph machines, or some other form of copying.

ron

[markh]

Fascinating. I wonder if copying ink was for mimeograph machines, or some other form of copying.

ron

 

 

Ever seen those old letter press devices in an old office. Two flat plates with a round rotating handle on top. Rotating the handle lowered the top plate to press against the bottom.

 

I've seen these in historic/museum displays of old offices. Also in Three Stooges episodes, where Moe stuffed Curly's head in - but I digress.

 

These were old, pre-Xerox, copy machines. You would use a dip pen with an extra thick copy ink. Either before it dried, or after with a water sprayer to add a little moisture, lay the original down and cover with a sheet of tissue paper, and crank the top plate down. After, peel the two pages apart. The tissue paper had a mirror image of the original writing - but since it was semi-transparent you could read from the back.

 

The people who did this were mostly male clerks. When the disruptive new technology of carbon paper became widely used, they were out of a job. Leaving copy presses to crack walnuts, or Curly's skull.....

 

 

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Edited February 1, 2016 by markh

[AAAndrew]

markh has it right. You see the big presses sold in the catalogs. But once carbon paper became popular, then those presses, and the copying ink went out, and manifold pens (think as flexible as a nail) came in so you could write through carbon paper.

[Azuniga]

Thank you for those images, very important piece of information... And well "once carbon paper became popular" they created the glass nib pen...

[Studio97]

I have hundreds of those antique pen points and some are still in the original boxes.