Parker 51
“Like a pen from another Planet”….. “So unique and so beautiful there is nothing to compare to it”.
The Parker 51 is one of the most successful pens ever produced and is truly recognizable throughout the world. The Parker 51 was a revolutionary design when it debuted, and advertised as “Ten years ahead of its time”.
The 51 was truly innovative at the time, with its hooded, tubular nib and multi-finned collector. The pen was developed for use with a new formula ink, advertised with the slogan, "writes dry with wet ink" and appropriately named "Parker 51 Ink.
The concept of the 51 was originally Kenneth Parker’s idea. He was acutely aware of how competitive the pen business was, and felt the only way to succeed was to work on the next generation of products while competitors were still trying to catch up with the previous one.
Marlin Baker, a local man and head of Research at Janesville, was charged with putting together all the elements of the design, which Kenneth had in mind. He finished up with eight different patents for the 51. Crucially, he was responsible for refining the design of the collector, one of the pen’s unique features. The only feature that wasn’t new was the filling system which was the same one employed in the previous generation of pens, the Vacumatic.
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Development of the Parker "51" was completed in 1939, the 51st anniversary of the Parker Pen Company, hence its name.
The company wanted to use a designation made of numbers rather than letters so as not to draw attention away from the primary trademark name of Parker. The company also had ambitious plans for marketing the pen abroad and wanted a name that would translate easily into any language.
Encouraged by early store tests conducted during August and September 1940, the pen was released for sale in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Denver and the State of Wisconsin where the pen was greeted with considerable enthusiasm. Following this extensive test marketing and with $250,000 already having been invested in the project, the Parker 51 was ready for its world premiere in January 1941. The scale of the investment meant that the company simply could not afford for the product to fail. Yet the fact remained that it was a very expensive pen. The cheapest model cost $12.50 and the most expensive $80: a substantial sum given that the average factory worker would have earned less than $30 a week. In addition, its main competitor, the Eversharp Skyline, retailed at just $5. Initially this led to reluctance on the part of the sales teams to push such a revolutionary and expensive pen to customers, yet 6,236 pens were sold in 1941.
Watch this video of Parker 51 production at Janesville in 1933
The company was stretched to the limit supplying the pent up demand for fountain pens.
Kenneth Parker was quoted as saying “It was a crazy time”. We knew it couldn’t last forever”. He realized that even the 51 would need replacing or dramatically modifying to retain consumer interest. The result of the ensuing research and development was the aerometric filler. The decision to return to the drawing board was one of the key moments in the pen’s history and one that ultimately secured the model’s future for an unprecedented period of time.
The advertising campaign accompanying the launch of the aerometric in 1949 was the biggest in the company’s history. The introduction of the new model was a mammoth logistical problem as the sales force had to be acquainted with the benefits of the new pen whilst running down the existing stocks of the vacumatic 51s. Once this hurdle was overcome sales increased rapidly and Parker began to expand the model range.
On 3 January 1950 the new 51 was awarded a gold medal for outstanding design and distinctive style from the American Fashion Academy. The Academy noted that “Parker has taken the lead in imbuing everyday writing implements with new artistry, with design that attracts and pleases, with an aura of fashion”. No other pen product had ever been selected for the award, reflecting the extraordinary success of Parker’s new product.
With various refinements, the 51 stayed in production until 1972 and during its lifetime the pen achieved sales in excess of $400 million, a figure beyond even the wildest dreams of the original development team