Translations:In Search of the First Shell/4/en

The numeric date code system did not begin until 1922 but occasionally one will find Shells that can be comfortably said to pre date 1922, specifically those stamped DUNHILL’S “SHELL” over MADE IN ENGLAND followed either by (i) PAT. MAR.9.15 over PAT.APP FOR, or (ii) PAT.1914 over PAT.APP FOR. The patent references are respectively to the US and Canada, and knowing the Shell patent application/grant history pipes bearing those stampings can be comfortably dated to circa 1919 – 1921. To these pipes we can also add, albeit less comfortably Shells stamped with English patent references appearing to have never been stamped with a date code. (Note that unlike American and Canadian patent stamps, the English patent stamps date the patent to the application not the grant - in case of Shells, 119708/17 - but this is not done until after the patent grant, i.e. October, 1918, so allowing time for die production a Shell stamped with an English Shell patent reference and no date code dates to 1919 at the earliest.).

But what about before circa 1919. While it has been contended otherwise, I am comfortably certain there were such prior Shells. First, protected by the initial patent application there would be no legal reason for impounding the new pipes at the Dunhill factory until the actual English patent grant in October 1918; and second, if we are to give any currency to the oft reported favorable acceptance of the new Shells by the Allied officers at the front lines we must necessarily allow that they were sent over and enjoyed for reasonable time before the November end of the war. Further, while I very much doubt that Alfred Dunhill, an aggressive merchant well familiar with the English patent process, would have allowed the first Shells to be release before a preliminary patent application was on file, I am likewise comfortable that he would not have allowed any one to delay his turning his new pipes to profit by dilly dallying around with that preliminary application. So my surmise is that sale of the first Shells began in late October 1917.