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About Walter A. Sheaffer
- Walter A.
- Sheaffer (July 27, 1867 – June 19, 1946) was an American inventor and businessman who developed the first commercially successful lever-filling fountain pen and founded the W.A.
- Sheaffer Pen Company.
- Walter Sheaffer was born in Bloomfield, Iowa.
- He was the oldest child of Elizabeth and Jacob Royer Sheaffer, who had settled in Bloomfield in 1854 and established a jewelry store.
- Sheaffer dropped out of school and first started working as a printer's devil, then a grocery boy and in the summer he operated a peanut stand.
- He next worked at a jewelry store in Centerville, Iowa and later at a store in Unionville, Missouri.
- He returned to Bloomfield in 1888, to become a partner with his father in the family business. In 1906, Sheaffer purchased a jewelry store in Fort Madison, Iowa.
- Inspired by the success of self-filling fountain pens—notably, Conklins—Sheaffer turned his attention to inventing a self-filling mechanism of his own.
- He received his first fountain pen patent in 1908, for a lever-filler, but did not put his design into production until 1912.
- The new business was incorporated at the end of January 1913 as the W.A.
- Sheaffer Pen Company; its success was rapid, and the jewelry store was soon sold.
- Within ten years, the company had joined the top rank of American pen manufacturers, and was advertising nationally.
- Sheaffer served as president of the company from 1913 to 1938.
- From 1938 until his death, he served as chairman of the board, while his son Craig Royer Sheaffer served as president.
- Sheaffer died in Fort Madison.
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