The Parker 51 was first launched in 1941 after many years of development.  The "51" referring to the 51st anniversary of the Parker Pen Company.  It is probably the best-known fountain pen ever and even today you would be hard pressed to find anyone who hasn't heard of it.

The technical design of the pen was intended to address a number of well-known shortcomings in contemporary fountain pens and was considered a great success.  In particular, the following features were introduced:

• The hooded nib greatly reduced the tendency to dry up if the pen was left unused for a few minutes with the cap off, it also gave added protection to the nib.  In addition it kept the user's fingers well away from the inky bits, making writing a much cleaner experience.





• The nib was made smaller and stronger and although it lacks the flexibility of traditional open nibs, it quickly won a reputation for silky-smooth writing and long life.





• Internally, a multi-finned "collector" was added as the primary ink reservoir, this design giving a well controlled ink flow but with better resistance to flooding, leaking and so on.  You can even take these pens in an aeroplane with confidence.





• The filler used on the original Parker 51s was taken from the Vacumatic pens of the period and although a bit fiddly, it was a proven reliable design which gave a very good ink capacity.  This was superseded in 1948 by the new "aerometric" system, using a plastic ("pli-glass") ink sac, compressed directly by a metal pressure bar.  This added further to the reliability of the pen, still regarded by many as one of the most dependable designs ever.

As well as this advanced internal design, the Parker 51 was a radical departure in cosmetic terms, with smooth modern lines and a complete lack of fussy decoration etc.  Not to everyone's taste of course, but its popularity quickly grew and it remained a best seller for two decades with minimal change to either its appearance or its mechanism.

All Parker 51 models have a metal cap - the slip-on design having been adopted for simplicity and to avoid problems with threaded parts.  The "Classic" pens have a "Lustraloy" cap with a silver appearance, while the "Custom" models have a gold-filled cap.  There have been many other variations however, look out for frosted or polished lustraloy caps, different designs of gold plated caps, silver plated caps and even the caps with different purity of gold plating used in the war years.

There have been matching propelling pencils, clutch pencils and ballpoints and duo and trio sets have been available, in a large variety of boxes and cases.

Today, the performance of the Parker 51 is as good as any modern pen and better than many.  Spare parts are still fairly plentiful and this robust design remains very popular as an everyday writing instrument.

As a collector's item, the Parker 51 offers plenty of opportunities (or should I say "challenges"?).  The first year (1941) pens are highly sought-after, the great range of cap styles used, particularly in the early years requires some research and the whole colour range is quite difficult to track down.  Add to this the Mk 1, 2 and 3 pens with their UK/US variants and there is scope to keep you searching for years!  If that isn't enough, you can try to track down a "red band" pen - produced in 1946 and 1947 only and using a different filling system based on a development of the button-filler.  These are painfully rare.

The Parker 51 is unusual in having reference book all of its own.  Called simply "Parker 51", this book was written by David and Mark Shepherd in 2004 and has the number ISBN 0-9546875-1-5.  It is a 'must' for any serious Parker 51 fan.