Which Pen Is Mightier?

The battle for the ball pen market turned into a free-for-all last week. Manhattan's Hearn Department Store gave the public its first chance to buy a ball pen for less than $12.50. It put on sale 18,000 new Blythe pens at $9.95 each. Before the week was out, Hearn's had sold so many that it had to get a second shipment by air.

Eversharp, which has threatened for months to bring out its pen, finally did. It claimed all the usual tricks for its CA (Capillary Action) pen, such as writing under water. It also boasted: 1) a cartridge-type refill; 2) choice of different colored inks; 3) a higher price, $15 plus jewelry tax. Eversharp had spent $2,000,000 for research and for the North and Central American rights to the Biro pen (TIME, Aug. 21, 1944), forerunner of the present crop of pens. But what Eversharp had got for its money was not clear, as new ball pens were turned out by a handful of companies:

P: Chicago's S. Buchsbaum & Co. was turning out a $12.50 vacuum feed ball pen, "The Style King Magic Flow," hoped to sell 150,000 this year.

P: The Ball Pen Co. of Los Angeles, which makes the Blythe pen, was producing 3,500 pens a day, to fill a backlog of 350,000 orders.

P: The Kimberly Pen Co. of Los Angeles had sold 25,000 of an earlier model, had just turned to a new cartridge-type model selling for $12.50. Kimberly was turning out 2,000 pens a day, to fill orders on hand for 250,000.

Eversharp has already filed two patent infringement suits, for $2,000,000 apiece, against Ball and Kimberly, in addition to its $1,000,000 counterclaim against Reynolds (TIME, Nov. 12, 1944). But none of them seemed concerned. Said one manufacturer: "Nobody's done any copying. The ball principle dates way back to the last century."

But three of the Big Four in the $60,000,000-a-year pen industry had apparently been caught napping by the new pen, which looked as if it would indeed, as its makers said, revolutionize the industry. Parker and Waterman were working on ball pens, but were not sure when they would put them on the market. The W. A. Sheaffer Pen Co. expected to have its ball pen on the market some time next fall.

In the midst of this, Penman Milton Reynolds, who had already skimmed the cream from the market by getting his pen out first, went after the milk. He arranged to distribute his pens in the United Kingdom, said he plans to open a plant in Australia.

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