One day while at the Sheaffer Pen Company Mr. Gilbert Olsen, head of the technical department, invited Nathan to have lunch with him. He told Nathan that he had just read an interesting article about the toy inventor Martin Glass, who was considered to be the King of Toys. He knew about Nathan’s Buchenwald toy and he thought it would be interesting for the two toy inventors to meet. Mr. Olsen sent a copy of Nathan’s toy story to Mr. Glass in Chicago and asked if he would like to meet Nathan. Ten days later, Nathan got a call that Mr. Glass was inviting him to lunch at his office. Mr. Glass had a team of 60 scientists and engineers and made millions of dollars per year selling toy patents. Mr. Glass wanted to know how much Nathan was paid for his toy invention. Nathan responded, “I was paid more than any inventor had ever been paid for a toy.” Mr. Glass replied, “Even more than me?” Nathan said, “I was definitely paid more - I was paid with my life and the lives of my 29 fellow prisoners.”
Mr. Glass was now curious to hear Nathan’s toy story. In the middle of Nathan recounting the toy story, Mr. Glass picked up his phone to make a call, which Nathan thought was very rude. Mr. Glass had to tell his friend Edwin Anthony “Tony” Weitzel on WGN Radio that he thought he had heard every story about toys, but this was different and told him it should be heard on his radio show. Mr. Glass hung-up and apologized to Nathan. He was sorry to interrupt his story and asked Nathan not to continue, but instead tell the whole story to thousands of people on Tony’s radio interview show. Nathan asked how he could tell his story with his heavy accent, but Mr. Glass insisted that he do it.
After he was given a cocktail drink, Nathan agreed to go on the radio show. The interview was held over dinner at McCormick Place. While driving back from the live talk show Mr. Glass acknowledged that Nathan had been paid more than anyone – there was no price greater than saving his life and the lives of 29 others. Two days later Nathan’s toy story was published in the Chicago Daily News newspaper with the headline “The Toy That Saved 30 Lives.”
While working for Sheaffer Pen, Nathan had an opportunity to meet Buckminster Fuller in Iowa City. Mr. Fuller, who was a well-known inventor and futurist, asked Nathan why he was working on such a dull object as pens, which had already been invented. Nathan asked Mr. Fuller if he knew how a fountain pen worked. Mr. Fuller replied that it simply came out of an ink cartridge. Nathan then asked, “Then what was in the space in the ink cartridge as the ink came out?” Mr. Fuller replied, “Of course it had to be air.” Nathan then said, “That without the air there would be negative pressure and the ink would not come out, but how does the air get into the cartridge?” Mr. Fuller didn’t know the answer to that question. After Nathan explained how the fountain and ballpoints worked, Mr. Fuller had a much greater appreciation for pen inventors. Mr. Fuller then considered designing a pen to be harder than perfecting a new missile, since it had to be simple to use, work 150,000 times in different positions, and be suitable for cost-effective mass production.
For a Christmas holiday vacation, Nathan thought he would go to Chicago. However, his friends at Sheaffer suggested that for his first vacation in America he should leave the cold midwest for sunny California. So he took a train to San Francisco, then a bus tour of Monterey and Carmel. A lady on the bus asked Nathan where he was from, since she didn’t recognize his heavy accent. In Latvia such a question refers to where you just came from, so Nathan responded “Iowa.” The lady then turned to her husband and said “I didn’t know that’s how they talked in Iowa!”
