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Autopoint Pencils 1981, Autopoint Inc., Robert L. Bolin Depositor

Autopoint Pencils Trade Catalogs

The Autopoint Company was founded in Chicago around 1920 and grew dramatically in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It pioneered use of Bakelite and other plastics to create mechanical pencils. It specialized in production of advertising pencils. By the 1960s, Autopoint had a sales force spread across the country, a large array of products, a factory in Chicago, and a corporate apparatus. It produced tens of thousands of pens a year.

Although Autopoint had had a number of corporate owners, it had operated as a free-standing company until the 1960s. In the late 1960s, new corporate owners dismantled the corporate …