Sheaffer pens

In 1912, Walter A. Sheaffer took his idea of a pen filling apparatus that utilized a lever system and, with his life savings, founded the W. A. Sheaffer Pen Company in Fort Madison, Iowa. The company was established in the back room of Mr. Sheaffer's jewelry store with seven employees, and was incorporated a year later, in 1913. By the 1930s, Sheaffer fountain pens were being advertised as the pen that "fills instantly from any ink-well, with one touch of a finger. Cleans automatically when filling."

Sheaffer has manufactured fountain pens down to the present day. The original lever-filler mechanism remained in use through the end of the 1940s, though a sac-less plunger design was introduced in the early 1930s. In 1949 Sheaffer adopted the "Touchdown" pneumatic filling mechanism for its top-line fountain pens. A development of the Touchdown design was the Snorkel, which added a small extendable tube underneath the nib to avoid the need to dip the nib into ink when operating the filler plunger. The last Snorkel pen was the oversized "Pen For Men (PFM)," a fat-bodied model introduced in 1959 with the then-new "Inlaid Nib" which has since been featured on all Sheaffer's high-end pens.