History

Artifacts

1910 Fountain Pen Advertisement

A 1910 advertisement implying that only a quality pen could complete the census.

Although the U.S. Census Bureau never endorsed the product, the L. E. Waterman Company claimed its fountain pens would save enumerators time in an advertisement featured in a 1910 issue of Scribner’s Magazine. In that year, approximately 70,000 enumerators conducted interviews for the 1910 Census. In cities, they were given 2 weeks to complete their work, while rural enumerators had 30 days to make their rounds. At its conclusion, the 1910 Census counted 92,228,496 residents—an average of more than 1,300 people per enumerator!

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