Introducing the Fountain Pen

June 28, 1922 – Walter Sheaffer was jeweler who ran a watch repair shop in Fort Madison, Iowa, a small town on the Mississippi River. In his spare time, Walter liked to tinker with new pen designs. You see back in those days, writing and bookkeeping was a messy business, where you had to dip a quill into an inkwell and scribble things out quickly before the ink ran out. The ink splattered and inkwells toppled over. The world needed a better solution, and Walter had an idea.

It was on this day the U.S. Patent office granted Walter Patent No. 1,421,141 for a lever-operated fountain pen with an internal rubber ink sac. By flipping the small lever, the ink sac would compress and then expand, which pulled ink easily and cleanly into the pen. So easy!

Walter called it the “Lifetime Pen” and guaranteed its effectiveness for each user’s lifetime. That was a bold call, but it worked. The invention caught on with everyone and quickly became a mission-critical part of everyday life in every office, school and home.

The Sheaffer Pen Company built a factory in Fort Madison and for most of the 20th century the town proudly hailed itself as the “Pen Capital” of America.