The “Pelikan Blätter” served as a newsletter of sorts that provided dealers with information and advice about new products and advertising. It was first published in 1929 and the October edition of that year detailed the introduction of Pelikan’s first ever fountain pen. By that time, the company had already been in business for nearly a century but had never produced a pen. The Romanian inventor Petrache Poenaru had been granted a patent in France for a fountain pen design in 1827 and Evelyn Andros de la Rue had developed a cumbersome piston filler as early as 1905 so the concepts had been firmly established by the time Pelikan produced their first model. Self-filling pens that relied on a pressure and lever system and eyedropper filled safety pens dominated the market in the period following World War I. Perhaps it was the addition of the Beindorff children to the family business in the early 1920s that injected fresh viewpoints and an eagerness to seek out new and modern product lines which prompted the venture. Maybe it was just happenstance that at this time in its history the company was propositioned by an engineer looking to bring his design to market. Whatever the reason, Pelikan finally entered the fray with the Transparent Pelikan Fountain Pen (also more simply known as the Pelikan Fountain Pen). Notice the lack of a model number? While similar in appearance to the 100, that designation didn’t come about until around 1931 when an expansion of the company’s product lines created the necessity for a more precise naming scheme. The pen initially derived its name from the transparent ink view window located behind the section. The fledgling design of the 1929 model was short lived and saw several small changes that quickly brought it more in line with how we envision the 100 today. Read on to learn how Pelikan got into the pen business and to explore the model that set the tone for the last 90 years of production.