Fountain Pen Profiles: Parker

George Safford Parker was born in Shullsburg, Wisconsin, in 1863. In the mid-1880s, as a young man, George himself settled in Janesville, Wisconsin, and began teaching a course in the growing field of telegraphy. To supplement his income, he took on a job retailing fountain pens; but he soon became disillusioned by the unreliability of the pens of the time, especially the ones he himself was selling. He took it upon himself to find a way to prevent, or at least work around, the problems he saw, and in 1888, he filed for his first patent. Not content to sit around waiting for his ship to come in, he was busily thinking up ways to make his pens better, and he never stopped improving his pens. The Parker Pen Company continues today with the development and production of fine writing instruments. This book is the story of some of Parker's most notable models through the decades.