The grace and attractiveness of desk sets added this autumn to the holiday madness through which fountain pen manufacturers pass at the end of each year. For some reason the retail sellers of the pens & pencils always underestimate their holiday trade. Stocks run low; telegrams and long distance telephone talks beg for shipments.
Out of last week’s pandemonium boomed a happy note from Fort Madison, Iowa, headquarters of the W. A. Sheaffer Pen Co. Walter A. Sheaffer, now 61 years old, had been a prosperous jeweler there 15 years ago. In all merchants prosperity and alertness are not concomitants. In Mr. Sheaffer they were. He organized his fountain pen company; hired skilled salesmen, skilled advertisement writers. They wrought as he expected. Last spring the 9,734 shares in the company were each worth $100. Last week a buyer was obliged to pay $852 for a share, and Mr. Sheaffer sent word to stockholders that they had best assemble in Fort Madison at once to change their capitalization from the 9,734 shares to 20 times that amount (194,680). The change is to distribute their vast profits in a thinner, more seemly layer.
Read the full text of the article, which briefly traces the history of writing from an ancient man with a piece of chipped flint to the invention of hard rubber “eyedropper” pens by Lewis E. Waterman, at Fountain Pens.
Filed under: Uncategorized, eyedropper, fountain pens, Lewis E. Waterman, Sheaffer, Time Magazine
Penagogy 