Parker Pen's Spin Cycle

Parker Whirl Clean counter displays were ingenious marketing tools that also cleaned pens of ink residue

- TIM LAROS

Long before printer companies figured out there is more profit in printer cartridges than in printers, pen companies realized that there was a lot of profit to be made by making and selling a proprietary brand of ink. The problem was getting customers to switch brands. Parker Pen Company developed various counter display apparatuses to remove the ink from a customer's pen and refill it with Parker ink, right in front of the customer.

Early on, these devices were quite simple. One such counter display was a Model No. 440 Parker Counter Service Unit from late 1940, pictured here. It contained a Parker fluorescent advertising lamp with a base that held two Parker Quink bottles, one with water to flush a pen and the other to refill the customer's pen with the new Parker Quink ink, which had premiered in 1931. This method of pen cleaning and refilling worked well for open-nib pens. The old ink was easily expelled by the pen's filling mechanism.

With the introduction of the Parker “51" fountain pen in 1941 with an ink-holding collector" or "ink trap," a more effective method of expelling the old ink was needed; hence the development of the centrifugal Whirl Clean pen cleaner.