Waterman used the capillarity principle to create his first pen. It used air to induce a steady and even flow of ink. His idea was to add an air hole in the nib and three grooves inside the feed mechanism. He christened his pen "the Regular" and decorated it with wood accents, obtaining a patent for it in 1884.
Waterman sold his hand-made pens out of the back of a cigar shop in his first year of operation. He guaranteed the pens for five years and advertised in a trendy magazine, The Review of Review. Orders began filtering in. By 1899, he had opened a factory in Montreal and was offering a variety of designs.
Waterman died in 1901 and his nephew, Frank D. Waterman, took the business overseas, increasing sales to 350,000 pens a year. The Treaty of Versailles was signed using a solid gold Waterman pen, a far cry from the day when Lewis Waterman lost his important contract due to a leaky fountain pen.