(photo courtesy of Christopher ~ please click on image to enlarge)
(all text below by Christopher)
"Personally, over and above the acquiring of and serious collecting of vintage pens, the history behind all of them fascinates me. This
particular vintage pen is unique in its background and definitely one of
a kind. But let me relate that just after World War
2 the Parker pen company was experiencing the strongest market ever.
Their pens were selling so well that they could hardly keep up with the
demand. In fact, the Parker sales department sold a staggering 5 million
Parker pens in 1946. Still Kenneth, the son
of George Parker, founder of the Parker company,realized to keep this
marketing gold mine alive, he had to invest at least some of this wealth
in creating new product to keep customer interest. At the same time,
there had been some notable problems with the
customer's use of the Parker Vacumatic filler. For a good number of
customers, it had proven just too complicated. Subsequently, the idea of
a new, less challenging filling mechanism was well worth considering.
Prior to, the Parker Duofold button filling system had been a total
success, so maybe some sort of button filling mechanism was the answer
that Parker was looking for. To this end, he set the wheels in motion
for his design department to come up with a button
filler Parker 51. Right off the get go, a threaded filler housing was
needed and instead of a steel or brass plated button, an aluminum one
seemed the way to move forward. The Parker Vacumatic blind cap had to be
somewhat modified, but the Duofold pressure
bar could still be used. There was also an idea of moving away from the
hooded 51 section in favour of an open nibbed pen and in turn,
lengthening the section for better handling. But at all costs, the
clutch ring was to be hopefully maintained to accommodate
the Parker 51 slip on cap. After many months of research and
development, two new Parker pens were introduced in 1946. The first was
the Parker VP, a button filler, open nibbed fountain pen with a longer
section and what became to be known as, the Parker 51
'Red Line'. The Red Line had a red plastic threaded filler housing with
an aluminum button filler. Plus, the pressure bar had been totally
modified to be more effective. But sadly both new models did not stand
the test of time and were dropped after only a
short time of market production.
Parker abandoned the idea of a 51 Button filler in favour of a rubber
blub filler, which shortly after was modified with a metal bulb or ink
sack guard to become the Parker 51 Aerometric. The pen I now will carry
on describing, is definitely one of the prototypes
that was part of the development in this process and path to the Parker
51 Aerometric. It carries a mixture of the features that the Parker
Design department was working on and considering. Starting off with the
filling system, it has the threaded button filler
housing of the Red Line 51 but in matching blue to the barrel and
modified blind cap. The pressure bar inside this pen is a typical
Duofold button filler type, but the section is a long one that appeared
on the Parker VS as is the open nib, which does not
look like a nib that was ever intended for anything but design and
development as marked. Between the section and the barrel is a standard
Parker 51 clutch ring, which holds a Parker 51 slip on cap in place..
The cap looks to be a definitely Parker design
department afterthought, in that it is a 51 Special cap. Consider that
the Parker Special was not introduced until 1950, my educated guess was
that this pen was never intended to be retailed and just had most of its
time at Parker. This is further supported
by the Later Parker logo on the cap, which was not applied until the
late 1950s. With all considered, I would have to say that this pen is a
true Parker 51 Prototype and in turn a valuable addition to add in turn
to my vintage pen collection."
