“Rite-o-Way” Desk Set

A desk set, such as this “Rite-o-Way”, comprised a pen and a desk base with a socket into which the pen was inserted for dipping or parking. Considered separately from the pen, the base was often called a fountain inkwell or fountain inkstand, or sometimes a reservoir base. With these desk sets one still had to dip the pen, but less than one would dip “old-fashioned” dip pens. And, depending on usage style, one might not have to re-dip one’s pen at all. Pick up the pen, write the note, then park the pen again. The pen was always ready to write and held more ink than an ordinary dip pen.  This setup avoided excess ink, dust, and other kinds of crude on the nib.

Richard Binder and David Watts, Jr. have written extensively about “Dip-less” desk sets. The information that follows comes from their research. Here is a link to their website which provides more information: One-Dip Desk Sets • RichardsPens.com

The W. A. Sheaffer Pen Company broke into the one-dip desk set market in early 1938, via its Wasp Pen Company sub-brand, with the WASP Rite-O-Way set (U.S. Patent N^o D111,153, issued September 6, 1938, to Robert Rose). There was nothing patentable in the inkstand’s interior; it simply accepted an ordinary Sheaffer Skrip^® ink bottle, which the inkstand’s instructions said should be uncapped and held firmly on a table while the inkstand, inverted, was screwed onto it like a cap. The streamlined Rite-O-Way was a striking example of the newly popular Streamline aesthetic in industrial design.

This streamlined Rite-o-Way desk set shared space in the WASP catalog with the Rite-O-Way 100, a plain cylindrical socket set that appeared in about 1940 (U.S. Patent N^o D123,303, issued October 29, 1940, to Herman K. Stempel). After World War II, however, the world had changed, and both the WASP brand and the excitement of the ultra-streamlined look, exemplified by the Rite-O-Way inkstand were history. Stempel gave the old Rite-O-Way 100 a slight style makeover (U.S. Patent N^o D145,820, issued October 22, 1946).