Montblanc’s Wonderful Architect’s Pen

By Fred Gorstein and L. Michael Fultz

All rights reserved by authors

Ernst Rösler, the inventor of the “Mont-blanc Architect’s pen,” was born in 1888, the seventh child of a government employee. He studied naval engineering and, during World War One, he served in the German Navy as chief engineer on a submarine. In 1916, while on military leave, he met Anne-marie Voss, daughter of Claus Voss, one of the principals of
the Simplo Füllfeder Gesellschaft, predecessor of the Montblanc Company in Hamburg. Two years later, while still in the midst of the Great War, they were married. The treaty which ended the war required that Germany abolish its navy and in 1919, at the urging of his wife, Rösler accepted a position with his father-in-law’s company as an engineer. His first project was to overhaul and upgrade the company’s gold nib operation. (Fig. 1). In 1921, he became production manager of the firm. In this position he also had responsibility for the refinement of existing pen designs and the creation of new mechanisms and models. Rösler was a talented artist as well as an excellent musician. He played the guitar and lute.

Since Ernst Rösler was trained as an engineer, he was no doubt very familiar with the tedium of inking lines with a ruling pen. This process requires very frequent stops to put another drop of ink between the blades of the pen while struggling to keep the outsides of the blades clean and to avoid any disturbance of the adjustment between them. Herr Rösler turned his considerable engineering talents to applying the fountain or reservoir principles to a blade style ruling pen.

There were already reservoir style ruling pens on the market. In 1887, Julius G. Zwicker of Austin, Minnesota filed a Patent application for a drafting pen with…

…a feed tube extended from the reservoir centrally down between the jaws. This Patent (Number 394,634 granted December 18, 1888) established the concept of a fountain style drafting pen using a hollow tube or needle to supply India Ink to the blades.

In January, 1892 Edmund Dickey was granted a patent (Number 490,340) for a force-feed ruling pen. This patent developed the concept and improved it by providing a positive flow of India Ink to the blades.

In 1920, Albert Gran of Chicago was granted a patent (Number 1,355,961) for a Fountain Ruling Pen. Gran’s pen featured,

…a hollow handle forming an ink reservoir, a removable closure for one end of the handle, pen blades carried by the other end of the handle and an ink feed tube extending from the reservoir and terminating between the pen blades, a longitudinally slidable plunger head in the feed tube positioned to force ink through the feed tube, a needle valve carried by the plunger in position to normally close the feed tube and having a groove therein positioned to open the feed tube upon advance of the plunger….

Gran assigned his patent to Designers Instrument Company of Chicago which marketed the pen as the “Designo.” Later, this patent was assigned to the Eugene Dietzgen Co., also of Chicago, who marketed the pen under the name “Champion patent Fountain Ruling Pen” (Fig.2). Dietzgen claimed that,

…The Champion patent Fountain Ruling Pen is a well made and practical pen. It can be used with any drawing ink, requires but one filling for a day’s work, will neither leak nor clog, is simple in construction, and is not affected by ink acids. Only the highest grade materials are used in its manufacture, and with proper care this pen will always operate satisfactorily and give excellent service….

About this same time, the Riefler firm of Nesselwang, Germany developed a fountain ruling pen which used the hollow needle system to feed India Ink from a reservoir in the handle of the pen. These pens were marketed in the United States by F. Weber & Co. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The 1920 F. Weber catalog describes Riefler’s Fountain Ruling Pen as,

…The most practical Fountain Ruling Pen on the market. The Pen, which slides over the handle is drawn off the same. Then dip the small tube into the ink bottle, drawing the ink into the reservoir in the handle by turning the nut on the top of the handle backwards. Replace the Ruling Pen to the handle and by slowly turning the top nut forward the ink will be forced into the Ruling Pen. After its use the ink in the Pen can be drawn back into the reservoir by repeating the same manipulation as in filling and the Ruling Pen can be cleaned as usual. In case the ink should clog the supply tube, the German-silver wire, which accompanies each Fountain Pen, can be run through it to clean the same. (Fig.3)….

In a patent application filed with the U. S. patent Office on March 12, 1923, Ernst Richard Gustav Albert Rösler sought a patent for his “Fountain Drawing Pen.” This patent was granted (Number 1,480,302) on January 8, 1924, and was assigned by Rösler to his employer, Simplo Füllfeder Gesellschaft Voss, Lausen & Dziambor of Hamburg, Germany (Fig.4). Ernst Rösler’s design differed from the Riefler and other designs in several important ways. Rösler’s piston filling mechanism was entirely internal to the pen, no threaded shaft and “nut” extended above the barrel of the pen. Moreover, Rösler’s design provided for a cap to prevent the India Ink from drying and clogging the pen. In the production model this was extended into an airtight case with a screw cap (Fig.5, 6)

Jens Rösler, in his excellent book, The Montblanc Diary & Collector’s Guide (Christians Verlag, Hamburg, 1993; ISBN 3-7672-1174-2), notes that Montblanc first tested the piston filling mechanism in 1921. It seems very likely that those tests were made during the development of his grandfather’s Fountain Drawing Pen. In 1934, the first Montblanc piston filling fountain pen was introduced, a direct descendant of the Architect’s Pen. Ernst Rösler passed away in 1972.

The Montblanc Architect’s or Fountain Ruling Pen is avidly sought by both fountain pen and drafting instrument collectors. There are two slightly varying styles, one somewhat more streamlined and smaller than the other. (Fig 7). There are perhaps fewer than 20 examples known and all are black hard rubber. The last reported sale at public auction of a Montblanc Architect’s Pen was at the Chicago Pen Auction in 1998. There a pen and companion case in generally excellent condition was sold for $2,400.00 plus buyer’s premium. More recent private sales suggest that prices are rising.

Montblanc’s Fountain Drawing Pen was not the final entry into the competition to develop a reservoir blade pen. In their 1941 catalog, the Eugene Dietzgen Company offers “The EDCO Vacuum Filled Fountain Ruling Pen”. Dietzgen describes it as,

…..an answer to the demand for an inking pen that will obviate the necessity of constant filling while doing continuous ruling (Fig. 8)……

Nevertheless, no reservoir style ruling pen has ever enjoyed much sales success….and as a consequence, all are scarce.

For more information about ruling pens and drawing instruments generally, please see the articles in the November-December, 2000 and January-February, 2001 issues of Pen World International. The authors have never found an advertisement nor catalog listing for Montblanc’s Architect’s Pen.

Should you have one, we would appreciate a copy.