Pen History
Pen History
As early as 4,000 B.C., ancient peoples used crude pens consisting of hollow straws or reeds that supported a short column of liquid. During the 500’s B.C., people began to make pens from the wing feathers of such birds as geese and swans. The shaft of the feathers was hardened, and the writing tip was shaped and slit to make writing easy. These feather pens were known as quill pens, and they were widely used until the development of steel-nib pens in the 1800’s.
By the late 1800’s, inventors had perfected an early version of the fountain pen. This pen represented a major improvement over previous pens, because it featured an ink reservoir and a capillary feed. Earlier pens held only a small amount of ink at a time and had to be repeatedly dipped in ink.
The First Fountain Pen In 1883, L. E. Waterman, an insurance salesman, purchased a writing contraption with its own ink reservoir. But when it leaked, ruining a sale, he got an idea for a better one and decided to make it himself. In those days a salesman often wore a vest chain with a small metal container holding a vial of ink in one pocket and a collapsible penholder in the other. Waterman examined several so-called pocket pens and saw that none of them had a mechanism for the sure control of ink flow. He determined to invent one. Applying the principle of capillary attraction, he designed a feed with a groove for air intake and three narrow slits in the bottom of the groove. As air bubbles interred, they pressed against the ink in the barrel and the ink descended through the slits in a uniform flow to the pen point.
This device was so novel the Patent Office granted a patent in 1884, only a few months after the filing. Waterman claimed that his new mechanism would "prevent the excessive discharge of the ink when the pen is in use." It was the first practical fountain pen and its three-fissure feed became the standard principle for all other makes produced thereafter.
Waterman started assembling his pens on a kitchen table in the rear of a cigar store. In September of 1885 he started to advertise. After that Waterman’s Ideal rode the road to fortune.
The first pens were long tubes with a cap fitted on a projection at the top of the barrel. The cone cap, sliding over the end, did not come until 1899. Color was first used in 1898 with the hexagon holder. A self-filling piston replaced the reloading eye dropper in 1903. In a 1908 model the barrel was made with a movable sleeve which exposed a metal bar; by finger pressure the bar squeezed a soft rubber sac. Up to this time there had been no sacs in fountain pens.
The Waterman Company (L. E. Waterman died in 1901) introduced a slot big enough to admit the edge of a coin to compress the sac in 1913. Later the same year the lever appeared, set in a metal housing attached to the barrel; the lever emptied or filled the sac completely in one stroke. Changes since that time have been mainly in styling.
The first Ball Point Pen The first patent for a ball point pen was No. 392,046, granted October 30, 1888, to John J. Loud of Weymouth, Mass. Loud used the pen to mark leather fabrics. Another ball point pen device was patented by Van Vechten Riesburg in 1916. Both patents lapsed without improvement renewal.
Ballpoint pens received little notice until World War 11(1939-1945). Many pilots began using ballpoint pens during this conflict, because such pens did not leak at high altitudes. After the war, ballpoint pens became increasingly popular. Soft-tip pens and rolling-ball pens both were introduced during the 1960’s.
The first ball point pen to replace the then common "fountain pen" was introduced by Milton Reynolds in 1945. It used a tiny ball bearing which rolled heavy gelatin ink onto the paper. The Reynolds Pen was a crude writing instrument, but it sold like "hot cakes" when first introduced at a price of $10, using the slogan "It writes under water." Competition finally forced prices down to less than 10 cents for ball point pens by 1960. By then the Reynolds pen had disappeared from the market place.
Before others invaded Reynold's ball point pen market, one of his flamboyant escapades to attract attention was to purchase a B26 Douglas transport airplane. He loaded it with Reynolds Pens and hired Pilot Bill Odom to fly him around the world in 1947, handing out Reynolds pens to people wherever he went. The publicity from this escapade was tremendous. Milton Reynolds was born in Albert Lea, Minn. in 1892 and died in Mexico City in 1976 at age 84.
Pencil History. The earliest pencils date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who used flat cakes of lead to mark faint black lines on papyrus (an early form of paper) to guide writers. In the Middle Ages, people used thin rods of lead or silver for drawing. The marking ability of graphite was discovered in the 1500’s, and the first modern pencil—that is, one consisting of a wood case glued around a stick of graphite—was made in the late 1700’s.
In 1795, Nicholas Jacques Conte, a French chemist, developed a pencil of powdered graphite and clay. His mixture proved to be as smooth and hard as pure graphite. Conte also discovered that a harder or softer writing core could be produced by varying the proportions of clay and graphite.
In the mid-1800’s, William Monroe, a Massachusetts cabinetmaker, invented a machine that cut and grooved wood slats precisely enough to make pencils. About the same time, the American inventor Joseph Dixon developed the method of cuffing single cedar cylinders in half to receive the core and then gluing them back to¬gether. In 1861, the first pencil-making factory in the United States was built in New York City by Eberhard Faber, an American manufacturer. The first mechanical pencil was patented by the Eagle Pencil Company in 1879.
As early as 4,000 B.C., ancient peoples used crude pens consisting of hollow straws or reeds that supported a short column of liquid. During the 500’s B.C., people began to make pens from the wing feathers of such birds as geese and swans. The shaft of the feathers was hardened, and the writing tip was shaped and slit to make writing easy. These feather pens were known as quill pens, and they were widely used until the development of steel-nib pens in the 1800’s.
By the late 1800’s, inventors had perfected an early version of the fountain pen. This pen represented a major improvement over previous pens, because it featured an ink reservoir and a capillary feed. Earlier pens held only a small amount of ink at a time and had to be repeatedly dipped in ink.
The First Fountain Pen In 1883, L. E. Waterman, an insurance salesman, purchased a writing contraption with its own ink reservoir. But when it leaked, ruining a sale, he got an idea for a better one and decided to make it himself. In those days a salesman often wore a vest chain with a small metal container holding a vial of ink in one pocket and a collapsible penholder in the other. Waterman examined several so-called pocket pens and saw that none of them had a mechanism for the sure control of ink flow. He determined to invent one. Applying the principle of capillary attraction, he designed a feed with a groove for air intake and three narrow slits in the bottom of the groove. As air bubbles interred, they pressed against the ink in the barrel and the ink descended through the slits in a uniform flow to the pen point.
This device was so novel the Patent Office granted a patent in 1884, only a few months after the filing. Waterman claimed that his new mechanism would "prevent the excessive discharge of the ink when the pen is in use." It was the first practical fountain pen and its three-fissure feed became the standard principle for all other makes produced thereafter.
Waterman started assembling his pens on a kitchen table in the rear of a cigar store. In September of 1885 he started to advertise. After that Waterman’s Ideal rode the road to fortune.
The first pens were long tubes with a cap fitted on a projection at the top of the barrel. The cone cap, sliding over the end, did not come until 1899. Color was first used in 1898 with the hexagon holder. A self-filling piston replaced the reloading eye dropper in 1903. In a 1908 model the barrel was made with a movable sleeve which exposed a metal bar; by finger pressure the bar squeezed a soft rubber sac. Up to this time there had been no sacs in fountain pens.
The Waterman Company (L. E. Waterman died in 1901) introduced a slot big enough to admit the edge of a coin to compress the sac in 1913. Later the same year the lever appeared, set in a metal housing attached to the barrel; the lever emptied or filled the sac completely in one stroke. Changes since that time have been mainly in styling.
The first Ball Point Pen The first patent for a ball point pen was No. 392,046, granted October 30, 1888, to John J. Loud of Weymouth, Mass. Loud used the pen to mark leather fabrics. Another ball point pen device was patented by Van Vechten Riesburg in 1916. Both patents lapsed without improvement renewal.
Ballpoint pens received little notice until World War 11(1939-1945). Many pilots began using ballpoint pens during this conflict, because such pens did not leak at high altitudes. After the war, ballpoint pens became increasingly popular. Soft-tip pens and rolling-ball pens both were introduced during the 1960’s.
The first ball point pen to replace the then common "fountain pen" was introduced by Milton Reynolds in 1945. It used a tiny ball bearing which rolled heavy gelatin ink onto the paper. The Reynolds Pen was a crude writing instrument, but it sold like "hot cakes" when first introduced at a price of $10, using the slogan "It writes under water." Competition finally forced prices down to less than 10 cents for ball point pens by 1960. By then the Reynolds pen had disappeared from the market place.
Before others invaded Reynold's ball point pen market, one of his flamboyant escapades to attract attention was to purchase a B26 Douglas transport airplane. He loaded it with Reynolds Pens and hired Pilot Bill Odom to fly him around the world in 1947, handing out Reynolds pens to people wherever he went. The publicity from this escapade was tremendous. Milton Reynolds was born in Albert Lea, Minn. in 1892 and died in Mexico City in 1976 at age 84.
Pencil History. The earliest pencils date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who used flat cakes of lead to mark faint black lines on papyrus (an early form of paper) to guide writers. In the Middle Ages, people used thin rods of lead or silver for drawing. The marking ability of graphite was discovered in the 1500’s, and the first modern pencil—that is, one consisting of a wood case glued around a stick of graphite—was made in the late 1700’s.
In 1795, Nicholas Jacques Conte, a French chemist, developed a pencil of powdered graphite and clay. His mixture proved to be as smooth and hard as pure graphite. Conte also discovered that a harder or softer writing core could be produced by varying the proportions of clay and graphite.
In the mid-1800’s, William Monroe, a Massachusetts cabinetmaker, invented a machine that cut and grooved wood slats precisely enough to make pencils. About the same time, the American inventor Joseph Dixon developed the method of cuffing single cedar cylinders in half to receive the core and then gluing them back to¬gether. In 1861, the first pencil-making factory in the United States was built in New York City by Eberhard Faber, an American manufacturer. The first mechanical pencil was patented by the Eagle Pencil Company in 1879.
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