Signature of Excellence display

Here is a traveling display of the pens from the first 100 years of the Parker Pen Company (1888 - 1988) and significant events associated with their introduction.  (Click on the picture of get a larger image and see more details.  Be patient as the image size is 226K).

Parker - A Centennial Salute to the Power of the Pen

This centennial exhibit features the lineage of significant pen models for Parker since 1888 and salutes notable individuals who made a mark in history with Parker.

Signature of Excellence large

Pens pictured, left-to-right:

Captions:

• Invented by George Parker, receiving a patent in 1889

• Italian composer Giacomo Puccini wrote the opera La Bohème in 1896 with a Parker pen.

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the detective character Sherlock Holmes and write with a Parker,

• George Bernard Shaw used a Parker in 1912 to pen the play Pygmalion which later inspired the popular musical My Fair Lady.

• General Dwight D. Eisenhower uses his Parker 51 in 1945 to sign the armistice pact concluding the Second World War's European front.  Later that year, General Douglas MacArthur uses his 20-year old Parker Duofold to do the same in the Pacific theater, signaling the end of World War II.

• Norman Rockwell is commissioned by Parker to create the art for magazines advertisements in the late 1950s.

• During the historic 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China, President Nixon gives two titanium Parker 75s containing traces of lunar dust brought back by the Apollo astronauts.

• Engraved Parker Classic pens were carried into space aboard the NASA Shuttle Discovery in November 1984 along with equipment for the first in a series of 3M Company experiments in space.  The pens were later presented as commemorative gifts,

• During the Geneva Conference of November 19, 1985 President Ronald Reagan presented as a gift to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev a Parker Premier desk set commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz space mission.