Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way: An Overview of Dip-less Desk Sets, Part III

Once dip-less desk sets became entrenched in the business world, they naturally proliferated as more companies got into the game.

- RICHARD BINDER AND DAVID WATTS, JR.

But the question remains: why use dip-less sets at all? The first and most obvious reason is simply ink capacity. With a design like Morris's, almost an entire bottle of ink can be used before the reservoir needs refilling. The pen will be usable without interruption and without filling for 20 to 30 times as long as a fountain desk pen will write before requiring filling. Furthermore, depending on how well or poorly the design of the fountain pen's desk socket is executed, the fountain pen can dry out inconveniently or, even more inconveniently, disgorge its entire ink supply messily into the socket.

In the case of the Morriset, there was a further advantage. The Morris company also sold Morriset ink, complete with the necessary metering device fitted as a plug under the bottle cap as shown in Bert M. Morris's 1940 U.S. Patent No. 2,188,828.

Because the air and ink passages in the plug (callouts 33 and 34, respectively) were of relatively small size, ink would not gush out during the process of inverting and installing the bottle; thus, replacing an empty ink bottle was quick and clean, and that was a signal improvement over the Ashmore/Trotman design for Esterbrook, in which the plug was a removable part of the inkwell. The design shown in the patent drawing above was sold as the Morriset Model A; with slight revisions, it became the Model B (shown to the right of the patent drawing). Among the long list of Morriset customers was the United States Senate.