Quink

In August 1930 one of the lead chemists, Galen Sayler, was hired directly and put to work in a small laboratory at company headquarters in Janesville, Wisconsin.

According to Kenneth Parker's personal journal, Quink production began on March 17, 1931, and $89,000 worth had been shipped by October 22—more than twice the company's expectations and an excellent return on the $68,000 spent on its development.

The accounts uniformly identify the supposed inventor as Francisco Quisumbing, a Filipino botanist who studied in both the Philippines and the US, gaining a PhD in Plant Taxonomy, Systematics and Morphology from the University of Chicago in 1923.

The milestones of Quisumbing's documented career are close enough to those recounted in the apocryphal accounts that it is probable that they refer, with differing degrees of accuracy, to the same man.

[3] According to a book published in 1960, Quisumbing inks then enjoyed an exclusive contract to supply all branches of the Philippine government.

[5] The success of Quink lay in its useful features: it had the desired quality of ink flow, it resisted water and molding, it was non-corrosive, and it was claimed to be quick-drying.

Parker was careful to print prominent warnings on caps, labels, and boxes that the ink could only be used in the 51 (and, later, its economy version, the 21), and would damage any other pen.

Prior to the full public introduction of the Parker 51 in 1941, selected market testing of the new pen was carried out, starting in 1939.