Topic of the Week: The Parker Vacumatic
One of an occasional series that spotlights one part of the Pentrace archive for readers who haven't explored the whole site yet.
A Burgundy Pearl set, dated by the Vacumatic Dater. The big Oversize (the size later sold as the Senior Maxima) has both a patent mark and the code 44 in its imprint: October–December 1934, just as date codes began. The slim pen has the patent mark alone, so it is earlier, from the first half of 1934. The pencil, coded 26, was made in April–June 1936. (Photo: Donal Higgins, private collection)
Parker’s Vacumatic was the company’s flagship from 1933 to 1948: laminated celluloid in stripes of pearl and jet, a filler with no ink sac, and on most pens a date code stamped into the barrel’s imprint. Read that code with the filler, clip, cap bands and colour, and you can date a Vacumatic to within three months, and tell which of its parts belong together. This week the archive’s best writing on the pen is gathered in one place, from reading its imprint to fixing its filler.
Date your own
The Vacumatic Dater does the reading for you: pick what you can see on the imprint, the parts, the size and the colour, and it gives a date and checks every part against it. The Golden Pearl Maxima below came out as July to September 1940, made in the U.S.A., with one part that doesn’t fit: the clip, which Parker had stopped using about three years earlier. Either the factory used up old stock, or the clip was swapped later. Every result has a link of its own, so you can share it on the Message Board.
A Golden Pearl Vacumatic Maxima. Its barrel code dates it to July–September 1940, with the second-generation Speedline filler; its arrow clip, used until about 1937, is older than the rest of the pen. (Photo: Donal Higgins, private collection)
Start here
If you only read a few of these, start with the following:
- How to Read a Parker Vacumatic Imprint
- Donal Higgins on the faint lettering on a Vacumatic’s barrel: where to find it, how to bring a worn imprint back, and how to read the date code, with a table of every model’s size and cap band. It ends with the Vacumatic Dater.
- Colors: The Parker Vacumatic
- Richard Binder on every colour the Vacumatic came in, from the Burgundy and Silver Pearl of 1933 to the Golden, Emerald and Azure Pearls at the end, with the Junior’s Golden Web and Shadow Wave.
- Anatomy of a Fountain Pen II: The Parker Vacumatic
- Richard Binder draws a Speedline Vacumatic in cutaway and shows why its filler, a rubber diaphragm and plunger instead of a sac, is unlike any other pen’s.
- Pen Doctor: The Other Vacumatic Tool
- When an old diaphragm has glued the filler into the barrel, the Pen Doctor’s home-made tool pushes it out from inside, without breaking the plunger.
Every article on the Vacumatic
Everything in the archive on this topic, grouped by section:
History
- Colors: The Parker Vacumatic
- Colors: The Striped Parker Duofold 1941 - 1946
- Pompeian Brown
- Colors: The Parker 51
Reference Pages
- How to Read a Parker Vacumatic Imprint
- How to Date a Parker 51
- Starting a Vintage Pen Collection: A User
Technical
Report
Repair
Pen Doctor
- Pen Doctor: The Other Vacumatic Tool
- Pen Doctor: Lockdown Vacumatic Dumps Ink When Filled & Mitigating a nib that catches
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