Superbow Sunday is here again, and if there is one thing people like more than the event itself, it’s the commercials. So what better way to celebrate the day than with one of the all-time great Superbow ads, a retail display case showcasing Staedtler’s compass range circa 1988. It contains some familiar faces along with a couple of newcomers, both with the word “Quick” in their names – albeit for different reasons, as we shall see.
The case itself is mostly formed of plastic with a sleek, minimalist design that echoes the presentation of Staedtler’s product range of the late eighties. Its contents are identified by their numbers on a strip fixed along the front edge. It was clearly intended as a countertop unit, as indicated by the non-slip pads on its underside, now in various stages of detachment as usual.
The hinged sheet acrylic lid is kept in place by a simple Staedtler-branded latch at the front that offers little in the way of security, and is another indication that this was not meant to be a wall-mounted display.
In organisational terms, the contents appear to have been arranged from left to right in order of quality, from the professional to the student level. That said, the standard of all the compasses featured here is relatively high, still made in Germany throughout at this point in Staedtler’s history.
Starting at the left we have the Technico 555, successor to Staedtler’s original Superbow range that had hitherto been their top-of-the-range compass since its launch in 1970.
Aimed at drafting professionals, it sported a bifurcated leg with dedicated screw-threaded technical pen socket, superior build quality, and the same patented quickset collets that had made such a success of the Superbow. For these reasons the Technico 555 had been chosen as Staedtler’s flagship for their 150th anniversary gold-plated compass in 1985, not long after its launch the previous year.
Alongside it are three mechanical pencil inserts comprising 2 mm leadholder with factory-fitted chisel-cut lead, 0.3 mm and 0.5 mm fineliners. These were all available separately or in sets under the Circofix banner.
An extension bar, again available in sets or separately as the 556 80, was of the type that fitted into a socket on the needle shoe so as to leave the bifurcated leg free.
It was also compatible with the Superbow 553, which is next up in the display. After almost two decades of incremental evolution, the Superbow remained Staedtler’s workhorse and a solid choice for anyone who did not feel the need for the dedicated technical pen leg of the Technico.
Enter our first newcomer, the Quickbow 552N. In some ways its arrival marked a surrender to the ubiquitous, lever-actuated quickset compass as popularised by Rotring from the mid-1970s and manufactured by Riefler, Ecobra, Seelig and countless others. Staedtler seems to have first introduced a Quickbow 552 model in 1984, with the 552N (for new) presumably some time after.
It sports largely the same build as the Superbow but without the patented locking collets. This type of lever action employed a standard spindle at the expense of the simple push/pull action of the shallow-pitch design. From one locked setting to another, the new Quickbow is definitely quicker to use than the Superbow, but the levers feel slightly lightweight and the compass lacks the elegant design of its stablemate.
Strangely, the Quickbow’s recess in the display case has room for a compass with locking collets such as the adjacent Superbow, perhaps indicating that the Quickbow was very new at the time or limited to certain markets.
After this, there is a decided downshift in functionality – not to mention speed – to the slowest compass of the lot: Staedtler’s Masterbow 551.
This was the spiritual successor to their original 1960s model 23886 master bow, based on the patents of inventor and sometime manufacturer Friedrich Foerster (the concept of the previously mentioned needle-clamp extension bar was another Foerster family innovation, patented in 1951 by Kaethe Foerster).
Reliable but cumbersome, the 551’s traditional spring head design and fixed spindle offered no quickset capabilities, but it was still valued by many for its stability, especially for pencil drawing.
Finally we have the second new entry, and a compass I had never noticed before now. Labelled simply 557, it took some searching to locate any reference to it at all, eventually tracking it down to an Italian catalogue from 1988 (the cover of which, incidentally, featured the Quickbow 552N).
Dubbed the Ascola Quick, it is a purely push/pull quick adjustment design with the same shallow-pitch spindle found in the Superbow, fine adjustment being possible with the centre wheel.
However, unlike its professional counterpart, it not only lacks any means of locking the legs, but is also purely a pencil compass. This, along with the name, suggests to me that it was aimed primarily at school use.
Nevertheless, it is very well built and pleasant to use, and for good reason: Peering into its inner workings we find our old friend the geared head, pioneered and patented by the Bavarian firm Lotter in the early 20th century, before enjoying a much wider revival in the 1980s.
It is difficult to imagine why, but the Ascola Quick seems to have been abandoned by Staedtler in fairly short order and remains a relatively scarce compass. The designation 557 was later recycled for various other more decidedly school-level compasses and geometry sets, some still available today. Not only does this seem a missed opportunity, but I can’t help but think that its simple shallow-pitch spindle design was exactly the kind of killer feature that the similarly ill-fated Galileo could have used to its advantage almost a decade later.
The compasses in this display case appear generally untouched, but there are signs of its former life in a retail environment. The new 552N Quickbow in particular seems to have been used for demonstration purposes – perhaps too quickly – as witnessed by the India ink stains around the handle.
That this is the only compass to have seen any real action is telling, given that Staedlter was to eventually drop all of the shallow-pitch spindle designs from its lineup, while the lever type went from strength to strength – it remains at the core of their range to this day, in the guise of the Mars Comfort 552 and Staedtler 553 Quick-setting compass.
Sadly, since my last Superbow Sunday post, Staedtler appears to have retired the Mars Professional 555, its successor to the Technico and another example of the enduring quickset lever type. Whether this signals a permanent retreat from the professional drawing instrument business we shall have to wait and see.
