Waterman Color-Coded Pens and Nibs

The Waterman Red Ripple – color coded for perfection!

The story of Waterman pens is as rich and as fascinating as the pens the company has, and continues to make. Lewis Edson Waterman – the man behind the company was a pen salesman in New York, working in a newly formed company which was shortly abandoned. Waterman, as the legend goes, stepped in, fitted the pens with a simplified feed that he had designed himself and literally planted the seeds of a brand that is still up and running. This “three fissure feed” was awarded a patent in 1884 and would literally be a first of a series of innovation that would go on to define the brand in the years to come. Being a salesman, the feed designed by Lewis Waterman was naturally superior, as it was designed with feedback from the end users, one of the earlier instances of customer centricity, which too, would become a characteristic feature of the company.

The three-fissure feed was followed up with the development of the “spoon feed” system that successfully prevented the overflow of ink in 1899, an advancement so celebrated, that it led to the receipt of the Gold Medal of Excellence at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, in 1900.

In 1901 Lewis E. Waterman passed away, with his nephew Frank D. Waterman taking over the helm of the company. While quality, reliability and the obsessive quest for innovation remained the same, Frank D Waterman’s tenure was known for the aggressive global expansion that was chalked out and implemented.

The first permanently attached pen clip was patented by Waterman in 1905 that allowed the pen to be permanently held in the pocket – a small step for Waterman, but a giant leap forward for pen-kind. The first retractable “safety-nib” pen was released soon after, in 1908. In those “early” years, Waterman pens were made of hard rubber, came fitted with 14 K gold nibs and the company was acknowledged for its high production volumes, which, added to the strong sales and distribution network of the company, ensured that they were virtually ubiquitous.

There were other reasons behind this runaway popularity of Waterman Pens in those days of yore – sheer variety certainly being one of them. Take the Colour coded pens from Waterman for example, which were virtually the rage in the late 1920’s and the early 1930’s. Altogether, there were eleven pens in the series with each colour representing a particular kind of nib, which was also perhaps among the first attempts by a manufacturer to match nibs with individual writing preferences.

The pens had an inlaid colour band near the top of the cap and on the face of the nib. This allowed the user to select the nib point according to his or her discretion. While the Red-Ripple, launched in 1927 followed this general rule, the colour coded Black 94, 7 and 5 pens were exceptions and carried the inserts in the barrel as opposed to the caps.

The spectrum on offer was, needless to say, wide enough to cater to even the most specific quirks of the users and even at a time when writing with a fountain pen was de rigueur, there was hardly a hand that couldn’t be fitted into one of the Red Ripples.  As a matter of fact, so widely accepted were these pens that, experts opine, they were paradoxically, a reason for Waterman stumbling in the market place – the company continued to push them (the coloured rippled hard rubbers) even when the competitors had moved on to plastic. But that is gist for another story.

The Colour banded pens were available in:

Red, which was the standard and suited the maximum number of writers. It had, what the company called, a “correspondence point” characterised by medium flexibility and was ideally suited for both home and office use.

Green, on the other end of the spectrum was rigid to the core, the nib hardened enough to be likened in company literature to “armour” grade plating. It was billed as one capable of taking extreme pressures and was slotted for use by salesmen.

Purple was for accountants and was both fine and stiff. It was celebrated for the thin, clear lines and small figures that could be made with little for no effort.

Pink was for fine lines that were extra flexible to boot. The key was resilience and the fine tapered point was ground to such perfection that it was a favourite of the stenographers.

Blue was in fact a nib point that was a refined stub. It wrote with a blunt, thick accent that “unusual, heavy” writers were known to prefer.

Yellow on the other hand came fitted with a special rounded point that could write on any paper surface, on any direction and was very popular with left-handed writers.

Brown pointers were originally fine with some flexibility. They were introduced in 1928 to expand the range that was already on offer and had striking resemblances with the pink and purple coded nibs.

Grey were rigid and oblique, in fact a slating stub point, which were aimed for writers who preferred to hold their pens slanted at an angle to the surface being written on. This was introduced in 1929.

Black coded nibs were introduced in 1929 and were actually the pink points that were repackaged to make them more need based. The black was in fact the nib that the stenographers liked the most because of its characteristic features that made taking dictations a breeze.

White ones were coarse nibs of which little is known except that they were fairly rare even in the heydays of the series. Coarse was the term Waterman used to refer to what is commonly known as broad, so this was one that presumably wrote with a thick line, probably with a fairly rigid character.

Naturally, pens from this series by Waterman continue to be highly collectible items and are as much favoured by collectors today as they were by actual end-users then!

The Waterman Red Ripple – colour coded for perfection!

The story of Waterman pens is as rich and as fascinating as the pens the company has, and continues to make. Lewis Edson Waterman – the man behind the company was a pen salesman in New York, working in a newly formed company which was shortly abandoned. Waterman, as the legend goes, stepped in, fitted the pens with a simplified feed that he had designed himself and literally planted the seeds of a brand that is still up and running. This “three fissure feed” was awarded a patent in 1884 and would literally be a first of a series of innovation that would go on to define the brand in the years to come. Being a salesman, the feed designed by Lewis Waterman was naturally superior, as it was designed with feedback from the end users, one of the earlier instances of customer centricity, which too, would become a characteristic feature of the company.

The three-fissure feed was followed up with the development of the “spoon feed” system that successfully prevented the overflow of ink in 1899, an advancement so celebrated, that it led to the receipt of the Gold Medal of Excellence at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, in 1900.

In 1901 Lewis E. Waterman passed away, with his nephew Frank D. Waterman taking over the helm of the company. While quality, reliability and the obsessive quest for innovation remained the same, Frank D Waterman’s tenure was known for the aggressive global expansion that was chalked out and implemented.

The first permanently attached pen clip was patented by Waterman in 1905 that allowed the pen to be permanently held in the pocket – a small step for Waterman, but a giant leap forward for pen-kind. The first retractable “safety-nib” pen was released soon after, in 1908. In those “early” years, Waterman pens were made of hard rubber, came fitted with 14 K gold nibs and the company was acknowledged for its high production volumes, which, added to the strong sales and distribution network of the company, ensured that they were virtually ubiquitous.

There were other reasons behind this runaway popularity of Waterman Pens in those days of yore – sheer variety certainly being one of them. Take the Colour coded pens from Waterman for example, which were virtually the rage in the late 1920’s and the early 1930’s. Altogether, there were eleven pens in the series with each colour representing a particular kind of nib, which was also perhaps among the first attempts by a manufacturer to match nibs with individual writing preferences.

The pens had an inlaid colour band near the top of the cap and on the face of the nib. This allowed the user to select the nib point according to his or her discretion. While the Red-Ripple, launched in 1927 followed this general rule, the colour coded Black 94, 7 and 5 pens were exceptions and carried the inserts in the barrel as opposed to the caps.

The spectrum on offer was, needless to say, wide enough to cater to even the most specific quirks of the users and even at a time when writing with a fountain pen was de rigueur, there was hardly a hand that couldn’t be fitted into one of the Red Ripples.  As a matter of fact, so widely accepted were these pens that, experts opine, they were paradoxically, a reason for Waterman stumbling in the market place – the company continued to push them (the coloured rippled hard rubbers) even when the competitors had moved on to plastic. But that is gist for another story.

The Colour banded pens were available in:

Red, which was the standard and suited the maximum number of writers. It had, what the company called, a “correspondence point” characterised by medium flexibility and was ideally suited for both home and office use.

Green, on the other end of the spectrum was rigid to the core, the nib hardened enough to be likened in company literature to “armour” grade plating. It was billed as one capable of taking extreme pressures and was slotted for use by salesmen.

Purple was for accountants and was both fine and stiff. It was celebrated for the thin, clear lines and small figures that could be made with little for no effort.

Pink was for fine lines that were extra flexible to boot. The key was resilience and the fine tapered point was ground to such perfection that it was a favourite of the stenographers.

Blue was in fact a nib point that was a refined stub. It wrote with a blunt, thick accent that “unusual, heavy” writers were known to prefer.

Yellow on the other hand came fitted with a special rounded point that could write on any paper surface, on any direction and was very popular with left-handed writers.

Brown pointers were originally fine with some flexibility. They were introduced in 1928 to expand the range that was already on offer and had striking resemblances with the pink and purple coded nibs.

Grey were rigid and oblique, in fact a slating stub point, which were aimed for writers who preferred to hold their pens slanted at an angle to the surface being written on. This was introduced in 1929.

Black coded nibs were introduced in 1929 and were actually the pink points that were repackaged to make them more need based. The black was in fact the nib that the stenographers liked the most because of its characteristic features that made taking dictations a breeze.

White ones were coarse nibs of which little is known except that they were fairly rare even in the heydays of the series. Coarse was the term Waterman used to refer to what is commonly known as broad, so this was one that presumably wrote with a thick line, probably with a fairly rigid character.

Naturally, pens from this series by Waterman continue to be highly collectible items and are as much favoured by collectors today as they were by actual end-users then!