The First Parker Pen

Often it is hard to separate fact from speculation. I believe the following to be fact. Before founding the Parker Pen Company (1889), George S. Parker worked as an instructor at the Valentine School of Telegraphy in Janesville. He also sold John Holland fountain pens as a sideline. Parker complained (in a magazine interview) that the Holland pens often did not work and that he was obliged to repair and modify them for the purchasers. It was from this experience that Mr. Parker said he learned to make fountain pens and also developed the ideas which lead to his first Patent for a pen feed.