At Home With a Pengineer

by John B. Roede

When my dad was a partner of Fred Wittnebert (inventor of the capillary-fill pen which became the Parker 61), their small consulting engineering firm had an office on LaSalle Street in Chicago. The times were not good for consultants, because most companies prided themselves on having all their engineering talent "in-house". In their scramble for enough clients to keep their heads above water, some very interesting items came home. The ones that made the most lasting impression on me, were the Parker 51's my dad brought home. They looked so clean and modern compared to every other fountain pen I had seen (and most other manufactured items), that they defined my idea of what a pen should look like. Although this was the 1946/47 time period, I am certain that they were all aerometrics, as I never dreamed there was such a thing as a vac-filler, until I saw one 3 years ago. In fact, when I visited the office one time, my dad showed me the plastic bladder (sac), and explained that normal rubber would not stand up to the special Parker 51 ink (can't remember if it was called "Superchrome" yet or not). The secret of its fast drying capability was related to the fact, that it was alkaline based, rather than acid based. This meant that if normal ink was used in a pen which retained some Superchrome, salts could be deposited in the tiny passages and clog them.

The reason for all these developmental 51's, was Fred's special relationship with Parker. During World War II, Martin Strauss, the savior and later the goat of Eversharp, wanted to make defense parts, and settled on gyro-controlled autopilots. He was unable to pirate any talent from Sperry Gyroscope Co, but made a deal with a sister company, Sperry Development.

In exchange for getting the Navy to pay for cost overruns on a torpedo director contract, Strauss secured the loan of 4 knowledgeable technical people. They set up and supervised an autopilot production line, on the unused, top two floors, of the Roscoe Street plant. The key to the Navy end of the deal was Assistant Secretary of the Navy Bard, who just HAPPENED to be an Eversharp director.

Fred Wittnebert was one of those loanees. Toward the end of the war, with much less to do in the gyro area, he did some poking around in the fountain pen area. He became aquatinted with Frank Alexander, who was a Vice President of Marketing. Alexander was running a sideline business making small parts for government contracts, which gave him the priority necessary to accumulate molding machines and machine tools. By the time the war ended, he had opened his own pen company in Bloomington Illinois. Fred left Eversharp (and Sperry Development), to start the new Wittnebert-Jones Corp. He came up with his idea for the capillary fill pen, and signed up Alexander Pen Co. as the first client.

When Parker purchased the rights to Alexander's pending capillary-fill patent, they hired two days a week of Fred's time, to develop the product further. While Fred was spending two days a week in Janesville, he was able to pick up additional small consulting projects, on which my dad worked in Chicago. Anyone who has toured the Parker plant, has no doubt seen the "writing machines" in which roughly six pens run back and forth on moving strips of paper. The ancestors of the current machines were one of the projects Dad executed for Parker. One of my most vivid memories of the period, was watching him fill page after page of notebook paper with continuous loops from a 51, while eating dinner with his left hand. This was either to establish how much mileage would be necessary to drain a 51, or how long it would write without a skip.

Another project was a "mar resistance" tester, so Parker could choose a tougher plastic than the 51 used, for pen barrels. Since I became a pen collector, I have often wondered if the pursuit of mar resistance led to the incredible shrinking barrels on the early 61's. There was also work on the bladders for the aerometric version of the 51, but I have no idea what it entailed. Likewise, I remember my father extolling the virtues of "electropolishing" to make the nibs very smooth.

After two years of scraping by, with too little work, Dad threw in the towel, and went back to a "regular" job. If it hadn't been for us 4 kids, I'm sure he would have stuck it out, until W-J was a success. Fred continued on for several years in spite of bids to join Parker full time, until his son was born. At that point, Janesville began to look like a better place to bring up a young boy than Chicago, and the Wittnebert-Jones Corporation closed its doors for the last time.

Author's Footnote:
For additional information on the Parker 61C, see Gorstein, F. and Berliner, G. "The Parker 61 Capillary Fountain Pen" The PENnant, Vol. IX, No. 3/4 (Fall 1995/Winter 1996) pp. 1-3.

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