| Collection |
FSA (unaccessioned) General |
| Description |
Two silver engraved pencils in an original box. Manufactured by Eversharp Pens and Pencils, made in U.S.A.
Donated by Willie Parsons, a descendant of Harold Parsons who owned the pencils.
From the Internet site: http://www.vintagepens.com/Eversharp_pencil.shtml
The Eversharp pencil was the brainchild of Charles R. Keeran, a native of Bloomington, Illinois and an inveterate inventor and entrepreneur. Nowadays many collectors take these seemingly ubiquitous all-metal pencils for granted, yet the original Eversharp was truly a groundbreaking innovation. The first mass-produced mechanical pencil to combine a simple propelling mechanism with large lead capacity and robust, ergonomically sound design, the Eversharp met with enthusiastic public acceptance. In the space of a few years millions were sold, not counting the numerous imitations which soon appeared, virtually all using the .046” (1.2 mm) lead that the Eversharp had established as a new standard. It was the Eversharp that redefined the mechanical pencil as a mass-market product, to the extent that “eversharp” came to be widely used as a generic term for a mechanical pencil.
The first Eversharps were manufactured in December of 1913, but quantity production only began after Keeran joined forces with the Wahl Adding Machine Company of Chicago towards the end of 1915. The Eversharp was a huge success for Wahl, which soon abandoned adding machines entirely; Wahl also managed to outmaneuver Keeran, who was left with almost nothing. By 1921, Wahl-Eversharp was turning out 35,000 Eversharps every day, and had sold over 12,000,000 pieces.
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| Object ID |
FSA0.800.0142 |
| Object Name |
Pencil, Mechanical |
| People |
Parsons, William
Parsons, Harold |
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