Meet The Parkers, Part ‘51’

I’ve long been a fan of Park­er foun­tain pens, but have always had mod­ern Park­ers. Come to think of it, until recent­ly I don’t think I’ve ever owned a pen man­u­fac­tured before I grad­u­at­ed from high school, nev­er mind before I was born. Thanks to a chance encounter at Sty­lo Pens a few weeks ago, that’s changed.

It came up in con­ver­sa­tion with anoth­er patron that I’d hoped to get a Park­er ‘61’ (essen­tial­ly a ‘51’ but with a cap­il­lary filler) but had lost the eBay auc­tion to get the one I’d found. Turns out the chap I was speak­ing with was the one who beat me to the ‘61’. As a con­so­la­tion, he invit­ed me to try out the ‘51’ he had just fin­ished restoring. 

The Park­er ‘51’ is arguably the eter­nal flag­ship of the Park­er Pen Com­pa­ny. Sold from 1941 to 1972, plus a con­vert­er-based homage to the orig­i­nal in 2002 called the «’51′ Spe­cial Edi­tion», The ‘511 is far from Park­er’s old­est mod­el as it is far from its newest but, prob­a­bly the mod­el with which Park­er added the most inno­v­a­tive fea­tures at one time, mak­ing it wide­ly pop­u­lar and with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of the Duo­fold, the most rec­og­niz­able as a Park­er. In adver­tise­ments, Park­er boast­ed that the ‘51’ was «the world’s most want­ed pen» and despite the decid­ed­ly self-serv­ing and unsci­en­tif­ic man­ner in which the infor­ma­tion they claimed was col­lect­ed, it was like­ly true. This par­tic­u­lar Park­er is a vacumat­ic filler, stor­ing the ink direct­ly in the bar­rel with­out a sac or oth­er con­tain­er in the bar­rel. The ink is pulled up into the pen from the vac­u­um cre­at­ed when the plunger is pulled back. That’s basi­cal­ly how mod­ern twist con­vert­ers work, and come to think of it, except for eye­drop­per-fill pens and pens that use car­tridges, almost all foun­tain pens pull the ink in with the vac­u­um cre­at­ed from the expan­sion of the inter­nal cham­ber. Vacumat­ics were made until 1948 when they were replaced with the aero­met­ric sys­tem, which used an inter­nal sac to hold ink. The most imme­di­ate­ly dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of the ‘51’ is its hood­ed nib, designed to expose as lit­tle of the nib and feed to the air until it hit the paper, allow­ing the use of fast-dry­ing ink with­out clogging.

The design gives the ‘51’ a mod­ern look, at least in com­par­i­son to most foun­tain pens, which don’t vary much from the nib design used in dip pens since the steel pen was invent­ed. Come to think of it, the hood and nib of the ’51′ sort of resem­bles the tip of a quill pen. Per­haps every­thing old real­ly does become new again. I would­n’t have tak­en this home if writ­ing with it weren’t a deli­cious treat. The 14kt gold nib is pret­ty darn stiff, typ­i­cal for pens made at that point in his­to­ry. There are pros and cons and trade­offs to a fine, stiff nib like this, but the final result is a smooth, reli­able line with very lit­tle vari­a­tion. The ‘51’ glides across paper and lends itself to speedy writ­ing with­out quirks or prob­lems. It’s much lighter than I gen­er­al­ly pre­fer my pens to be, but its oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics more than make up for that. 

Own­ing a pen like this is a reminder of how things ought to be. Rarely in today’s advance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy does any­thing work right the first time and keep going for more than a few months, nev­er mind a few years. This pen was made 62 years ago and while it may have had some parts replaced along the way, it’s a bet­ter writer than the major­i­ty of pens made in the last 62 months. 1945 Park­er ‘51’: filled weight 18 grams