The pen story

A sharp flint... a finger dipped in blood or plant juice,.. these were the tools used by primitive man to record his experiences on cave walls and rocks. As he became more intelligent, man developed more complex writing systems – pictures, symbols' alphabets... and more efficient writing instruments.

Twoof the earliest implements were the brush, employed in China, and the stylus. The stylus, a sharp instrument made of bone or metal, was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans to inscribe signs and words on wax-covered tablets.

Meanwhile, the ancient Egyptians were writing on papyrus with pen and ink. The ink was basically a mixture of bamboo, soot, water and gum; the pens were made from the hollow tubular stems of reeds, split and sharpened.

Papyrus and parchment spread to other countries. So did the reed pen. The Romans made their version from bamboo but instead of splitting it, they cut one end t«a nib-shape, filled the hollow stem with ink; then squeezed it to force the ink onto the nib. That was one of the very first fountain pens.

The stylus was in fashion for some three thousand years; the reed pen for only three hundred because, with the introduction of paper, a much finer instrument was needed. It came in the form of a quill feather taken from the wings of swans, crows or, more often, geese. The new implement inspired the word "pen" (taken from "penna," the Latin term for feather).

From the sixth to the eighteenth century, the quill was the writing instrument of the western world.

The next major step in the pen story was taken in 1809 by Joseph Bramah, an English engineer. He invented a machine for manufacturing quill nibs which were then inserted into holders. Soon this type of pen was in common use. Within twenty years quill nibs had been replaced by steel ones.

The next chapter in the pen saga begins in 1884 in America... A young insurance agent, Lewis Waterman, tipped his inkwell over a contract just at the moment of signing and consequently lost a sale worth one hundred thousand dollars. This misfortune determined Waterman to design a pen containing its own supply of ink – the fountain pen.

While the fountain pen was gaining in popularity, another invention hit the writing public. The ballpoint. Although patents on ball-point pens date back to the 1880s, the world's first workable version was developed in 1943 by Lazlo Joseph Biro, a Hungarian living in Argentina.

Assignments:

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