—Exceedingly rare Forrester Pencil Sharpener, Price $12,400.
Samuel Forrester of Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, was an inventor in his own right. Forrester can claim not less then seven patents to his name, the last one was issued years after he died in 1913.
Collectors do like objects which were manufactured but for what ever reason were a failure and hard, or even impossible to find. The pencil sharpener offered here is a good example; there is only one other one known to exist.
Remarkable about the Forrester pencil sharpener is, that Forrester twice filed a new patent application for his pencil sharpener before his last patent was even granted.
The design the pencil sharpener offered here is based on, Forrester applied for a total of three patents. The three patents offer a nine page written account of the progress he made with his invention; a unique insight into the mind of a 19th century inventor. The reason for the failure of his invention is obvious; the pencil sharpener is very complex, difficult to operate, expensive to manufacture, too large, and did not even really work well.
Other pencil sharpeners from the same time period accomplish the simple task to sharpen a pencil with far less parts, read more>>
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