Waterman Bicentennial French Revolution Commemorative Fountain Pen, France 1989

Rare and Iconic ** New Old Stock Waterman Bicentennial Fountain Pen issued in Commemoration of the French Revolution and Declaration of the Rights of Man, France 1989 **

In 1989, leading up to the 200 years celebrations of the French Revolution and Declaration of the Rights of Man, Waterman very briefly produced a “Bicentenaire” (Bicentennial) version within their Forum line of Fountain Pens. Assuring their rarity, these pens were available exclusively in France.

• Filling mechanism: Cartridge
• Nib: Fine point, gold plated, signed “Waterman France F”
• Length: 13.9 mm / 5 ½ inches (when pen is closed)
  Material: Resin
• Decoration: Imprinted with citations from the Declaration of the Rights of Man, plus portions of the musical score for the “Marseillaise” national anthem.
• Condition: Mint. Never used original new-old-stock, complete with original b.

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Waterman

Lewis Edson Waterman is credited with inventing the 1st practical fountain pen in 1884.

As the story goes, Waterman, an insurance broker, was getting ready to sign an important contract. For the occasion, he purchased one of those “new” fountain pens that had recently come on the market, thinking it would be more practical and stylish than the dip pen and pocket inkwell he usually carried.

However, when the time came to sign, the pen first refused to write and then badly stained the contract. Waterman rushed back to his office to get another copy, but when he returned, the customer had signed with a rival broker.

On the spot, Waterman determined to devise a “real” fountain pen, one he could depend upon. In his brother’s workshop, he analyzed the ink to paper exchange in pens and discovered that the problem lay in the function of the feed, through which the ink first flowed to the nib. After numerous experiments, he developed the “Three Channel Feed”, a structure based on the principle of capillary attraction. On 12 February 1884, Waterman was granted a US patent for his invention. Variations of his design were adopted by all fountain pen manufacturers, so that Waterman’s slogan quickly became “the Daddy of Them All”.

In 1888, the firm was renamed L.E. Waterman Company. In the following year, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Waterman was awarded a bronze medal, the highest honour awarded to a fountain pen designer and manufacturer. From this point forward, innovation followed upon innovation and success upon success. Waterman ultimately grew to become by far the most important of the “Big Four” fountain pen manufacturers.

Already by 1903, Waterman pens were sold throughout the United States and Canada. Subsequently, Frank D. Waterman, Lewis Waterman’s nephew, led the Waterman name to cross the Atlantic and conquer Europe.

In 1926, a Waterman agent by the name of Jules Fagard established a quasi-independent French subsidiary called JiF-Waterman, to manufacture Waterman pens in France. In the following year, a JiF-Waterman researcher named Perraud achieved a major breakthrough: he invented the ink cartridge! It consisted of a small glass tube with a cork-stopper. The Pioneer Waterman “1st Ever” Cartridge Filling Fountain Pen. And since any French invention is automatically patented, this invention only obtained an international patent in 1936, but remained a JiF-Waterman exclusive for twenty years!