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!

Learn more about interesting census-related artifacts on the Census Bureau's social media pages using the tag #ArtifactFriday. For previous #ArtifactFriday posts, visit the History Web site's Artifacts pages.