Blotting out the Truth
Blotting Out the Truth The stunning discovery of a century-long cover-up of the real beginnings of L. E. Waterman’s Ideal Pen Company By George Rimakis and Daniel Kirchheimer “Many business men in America today fear to face the facts! Many men are ashamed to do so! All have skeletons; how many hide them, bury them, cover them over, gloss them over; and how many dig them out, turn on the sunlight, bring them to the surface, ruthlessly get the facts, no matter what they are, and then do what is necessary to set their houses to rights?” – “How Waterman Won,” Editor and Publisher, August 13, 1921 “It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did.” – Mark Twain, letter to Helen Keller, March 17, 1903 The story is a familiar one, and it has been repeated countless times for over a hundred years. In the latter part of the 19th century, a working man, frustrated by the skipping and blotting of the early fountain pens he tried, declared that a fortune awaited the person who could develop a practical fountain pen. After intense toil in a wagon-maker’s workshop, he succeeded in crafting a feed for a fountain pen in which he had enough confidence to apply for a patent. In mid-1883, ready to market his invention, he abandoned his former profession and set up shop in the back room of a cigar store on Fulton Street in New York City.
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