Esterbrook Reaches Large-Scale Steel-Pen Production

By 1928, our Camden factory had reached one of the highest production levels of Esterbrook's steel-pen era. A historical account of the plant records annual output of approximately 216 million steel pens, equivalent to about 600,000 pens per day. The same account described the factory as operating hundreds of machines, many developed specifically for the manufacture of steel pens. Production at this scale was the result of decades of mechanisation. Manufacturing a steel nib still required a sequence of specialised operations—including cutting, forming, piercing, hardening, grinding, slitting and finishing—but machinery allowed these processes to be performed in very large volumes. The Camden works had expanded repeatedly since the 19th century, including the construction of its five-storey reinforced-concrete addition in 1912. Esterbrook pens were shipped well beyond the domestic market. Contemporary descriptions of the business record an established export trade, continuing the international distribution network the company had developed during the preceding decades. The 1928 production figures illustrate the scale traditional steel-pen manufacturing could still achieve even as fountain pens were becoming increasingly important to the writing-instrument industry.