William A. Sheaffer founded the Sheaffer Pen Company in 1912. His invention of the lever-filling fountain pen that year revolutionized how fountain pens were filled, and by the 1920s Sheaffer became one of the world's most dominant pen companies. Always innovating filling systems, Sheaffer also created a Vacuum-Fil pen, pneumatic TouchDown filler and pneumatic Snorkel filler that made for the first truly mess-free bottled-ink filling system. Started in Fort Madison, Iowa, the Sheaffer Pen Company today is owned by India's William Penn Company.