Glossopedia of Pen Terms

(This page revised December 30, 2012)

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K
Kahn	(David Kahn, Inc.) A manufacturing company located in North Bergen, New Jersey. Founded in 1896 by David Kahn, a Jewish immigrant. Kahn’s company manufactured ornate pencil cases, mechanical pencils, and pens, initiating its Wearever brand of fountain pens in about 1918. It sold third-tier pens and pencils (and, during the 1930s, combos) in a bewildering variety of styles over the years, under the Wearever brand and others such as Jefferson, Leeds, and Onward. During the 1930s, Kahn also sold a better low-priced pen line called Pioneer, featuring a two-piece nib (U.S. Patent Nº 1,989,220) consisting of a very small 14K gold nib held in a stainless steel frame to make a complete nib large enough to fit properly into an average-sized pen. In the late 1920s, Kahn investigated the injection molding process then being developed in Germany; he brought machinery back to the U.S. and was probably the first manufacturer to produce injection-molded pens. For many years after World War II, Kahn was the world’s largest manufacturer of fountain pens. For most of its history, the Wearever brand meant steel nibs, but some customers expressed a desire for Wearevers with gold nibs, and Kahn provided them. Perhaps the best known Wearever model was the Pennant, produced in the millions during the 1950s. Shown below are Wearever Supreme, Pacemaker, and Pennant models, a Jefferson pen, and a Pioneer 191P. The company was sold to Dixon in 1986. See also Pacemaker, Pennant, Supreme, Zenith.
karat	(abbr. K or KT; also carat, abbr. C or CT) A system for specifying the quality of gold alloys by stating how many parts of gold per 24 parts of the total metal content, measured by weight, are contained in a given alloy. 24-karat (24K) is pure gold, 12K is 50% gold by weight, and so on. 14K and 18K are the alloys most commonly used in pens.
Kashmir	One of the “exotic” celluloid colors (Burma, Cathay, Jet Black, Kashmir, and Morocco) offered on the first generation of the Wahl-Eversharp Doric. Kashmir is chunks of pearlescent green veined with black, as shown to the right. See also Burma, Cathay, Doric, Morocco.
Keene	(Charles A. Keene) A New York City jeweler who founded his business in the mid-1880s. From c. 1918 to 1931, Keene sold mechanical pencils and fountain pens imprinted with his own brand. He jobbed at least some of these products, either complete or in parts, from Eclipse; some of his later pens featured the unique lever mounting designed for Eclipse by David Klein (U.S. Patent Nº 1,475,953). Shown below is a Keene-branded matchstick filler. See also Eclipse.
Kegrize	(Kegrize Pen Company) A fountain pen manufacturing company located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; founded c. 1901 by Frank M. Kegrize, appears to have failed before 1910. The company called its pen the Balanced Gravity Fountain Pen and guaranteed that it would not blot while writing or go dry while capped in the user’s pocket. The key to these claims was Kegrize’s feed design (U.S. Patents Nos 757,664 and 810,284).
keyhole	One of many shapes used to enhance the appearance of the breather hole in a nib; used for the nibs of some early Parker eyedropper-filling pens but best known as a distinguishing mark of the nibs L. E. Waterman used for its Nº 5 and Nº 7 pens beginning in 1927. Shown here is the nib of a Nº 7. See also nib.
Keystone	1  The Keystone Fountain Pen, a taper-cap eyedropper-filling model produced by Soper & Sievewright, fitted with a manually-operated ink shut-off (based on U.S. Patent Nº 663,590) to prevent leakage in the pocket and also to provide for filling by removal of a threaded plug from the distal end of the barrel.  2  A model name used by David Kahn, Inc., for one of its Wearever pens. See also Kahn.
Kimberly	(Kimberly Corporation) A pen manufacturer located in Culver City, California; founded in 1945 by Leo Mizis (who later changed his name to Leo Kimberly). Mizis hired engineer Hartley M. Sears to invent a ballpoint pen for Kimberly. Sears succeeded in producing a ballpoint that actually worked, and he and Clarence O. Schrader developed a process for manufacturing the ballpoint tips and a machine that did the job. In May 1947, Sears and Schrader jumped ship to set up the Hartley Pen Company, Inc., and filed for a patent on their process and machine (U.S. Patent Nº 2,498,009). Kimberly filed suit against Hartley over the process and the machine. Eversharp, which had purchased the U.S. rights to László Bíró’s ballpoint design (U.S. Patent Nº 2,390,636), filed against both Kimberly and Hartley on grounds that they had infringed Eversharp’s patent rights by making ballpoints at all. The outcome of the latter suit was Eversharp’s acquisition of sufficient interest in Kimberly that Kimberly became an exclusive Eversharp brand. See also Pockette.
knifing	A “quick and dirty” technique for spreading a nib’s tines to increase flow by inserting the blade of a craft knife between the tines while the nib is still installed in the pen. When attempted by an inexperienced person, knifing virtually always results in damage to the nib’s slit edges and slit wall, and it can also produce an hourglass-shaped slit that will not support proper flow. While knifing is safe in the hands of an expert, its use by others is strongly deprecated! See also flow, nib.
knurled band	See milled band.
Kovàcs, Theodor	See Pelikan, piston.
Kraker	(Kraker Pen Company) A pen manufacturing company located in Kansas City, Missouri; founded by George M. Kraker, a Conklin salesman who had left the employ of that company to help Walter A. Sheaffer found Sheaffer’s own company in 1913. Kraker soon left Sheaffer over money matters, having first deceived Sheaffer into signing a contract whose effect would be to keep Sheaffer out of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and part of Colorado for a period of 10 years. Kraker’s pens were functionally identical to Sheaffer’s; to protect his lever patent, Sheaffer sued for patent infringement and won, thereby acquiring the assets of the Kraker company and voiding Kraker’s duplicitous contract. George Kraker himself remained in the pen business and operated several companies until at least the 1930s; perhaps the best known of these companies was the Michael George Pen Company of Grand Haven, Michigan, which for a time manufactured Monogram pens for the Rexall drug-store chain. See also Dixie, Monogram.
Kreko	A “house brand” of fountain pens produced by a currently unknown manufacturer for the S. H. Kress & Co. “five and dime” department store chain during the 1930s. Kreko pens were of low quality; some models lacked inner caps, and in 1936 Consumers Union found that sacs were not glued to the sections in several samples.
Kritikson	See Security.
Kritzler	(L. Kritzler Pen Company) A pen manufacturing company located in New York City; founded by Louis Kritzler and operated in the early decades of the 20th century. The company was primarily a maker of gold nibs but also sold fountain pens under its own name. The pens are virtually identical to products sold under the Morton and Roxy brands, which were owned by the Union Pen Company, a subsidiary of Morrison. See also Morrison, Union.
KT	An obsolescent abbreviation for karat, seen most commonly on vintage U.S.- and German-made nibs.

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