The Phenomenal Story Of The Pen
Image: Olivander
The humble pen may be mightier than the sword, but it is nevertheless taken for granted in today’s modern world. But that wasn’t always the case! Pens have a rich history dating back millennia to the earliest civilisations where only very few people had the skill required to wield, giving them a real and very tangible power. While you may think that this contrasts markedly with our modern information-saturated world where pens are readily accessible to anyone, you would sadly be mistaken. Even though pens have fetched well north of $200,000 at auction, there still remains large swathes of the world where pens are seldom seen, much less used.
The story of the pen so far has been an intriguing one, and despite the best efforts to move data recording beyond pen and paper into the cloud, its last chapter is still a very long way off.
The Earliest Pens
Image: Wikimedia
The earliest recorded use of the great, great grandfather of the pens we use today were the thin reed brushes and pens used to write on parchment by the ancient Egyptians from about 3000 BC. This kind of pen was cut from sea rushes, with a slit made in a narrow tip. The shaft of the reed acted as an ink reservoir. So ingenious was its design that it continued to be used right up to the Middle Ages, when it began to be replaced by the quill.
Image: Willem van Bergen
It is the Mesopotamians who are credited with the invention of the stylus, which they used to write cuneiform. Egyptians and Minoans used the stylus for linear A and hieroglyphics. Styluses were used to carve words on dried clay tablets. The Romans used them to write on wax tablets, as demonstrated by the wax tablets found on Hadrian’s Wall.
Quills were made from the flight feathers of large birds, most often geese. The quill was used to write some of the Dead Sea Scrolls (in around 100 BC). In Europe, where ‘imported’ reeds became scarce after the fall of the Roman Empire, the quill began to take the place of reed pens. So well did they work that they were used right up to the 19th century.
The Age of the Reservoir Pen
Image: Swiv
Like the reed pen, the quill was an early version of the fountain pen. Ink flowed through the shaft to the tip, where it emerged through a small slit.
It was the fastidious Fatimid Caliph of Egypt who, in the year 953, rejected the dip pen demanded one that would not stain his hands or clothes. He was supplied with a pen that held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib via gravity and capillary action. The unsung inventor of this ingenious contraption is sadly lost to history.
Over the years, various attempts were made to sophisticate the design of the quill pen. In 1636, a German inventor, Daniel Schwenter, described a pen he had made from two quills. One quill served as the ink reservoir and was slotted inside the outer quill. A cork sealed the inner quill from which ink was squeezed through a small hole.
Image: Jason Tavares
The modern fountain pen was invented by the Romanian Petrache Poenaru, then a student in Paris. In 1827, the French government patented his invention. Since then, it was unstoppable. Patent offices were stampeded with variations on the fountain pen. However, it remains a fact that the basic design held and a fountain pen today differs very little from its earlier origins.
Pens in the 20th Century
Image: nickso
The next development came from a Hungarian called László Bíró. Bíró spent a great deal of time working on designs for various new types of pens. One of these was a pen with a tiny rotating ball that delivered ink to paper. Bíró filed a British patent in 1938. Two years later, he, his brother and a friend fled Nazi Germany for Argentina, where he filed another patent and formed a company: Bíró Pens of Argentina.
Image: Pikaluk
Felt tip pens and markers were invented by Yukio Hourie of the Tokyo Stationery Company in Japan in the 1960s. Since then, they have appeared in every shape, colour, size and form. In the 1980s, the rollerball pen was introduced.
Pens Playful and Bizarre
Image: Wikimedia
There is no shortage of fun to be had with pens. Take the biro. One of its drawbacks is that it does not work well with the point up. An American industrialist, Paul Fischer, was determined to invent a pen a pen that would write at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on wet and greasy paper, at any angle and temperature. The urban legend goes that the Americans spent $11 million to develop a space pen. In reality, Paul Fischer successfully marketed his famous space pen to the American and Soviet space programmes.
Another myth has it that, when the Apollo 11 astronauts accidentally snapped off a switch designed to trigger their return to earth, they used a Fischer Space Pen to press the button. Disappointingly for Fischer, Buzz Aldrin insists that he used a felt-tip pen.
Then there is the fascinating story of the counterfeit banknote detection pen. Counterfeit pens contain an iodine-based ink. Typically bank notes are printed on cotton fibres and do not contain the starches that react with iodine. If the mark on the banknote is yellowish to clear, the manufacturers claim the note is genuine. However, because crime will always find a way, counterfeiters began using starch-free paper, or bleached smaller denominations and used the resulting blank paper to print higher denominations. Not the perfect solution to counterfeit then.
Image: Wikimedia
One of the most bizarre uses to which a pen can be put is in something called pen spinning. This involves manipulating a pen to produce a series of tricks or entertainment. YouTube offers plenty of lessons and demonstrations in pen spinning.
An Idea That Lasted
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the various pens invented over the last few millennia is that most of them are adaptations or extensions of their ancestors.
We still use a stylus and a dipping pen, although we no longer make them out of reeds and bamboo.
Image: Josh Bancroft
The stylus is used today for various arts and crafts applications. It is also used to engrave into materials like metal or clay. Latterly scientists have used styluses for recording in certain applications, due to the fact that they tolerate a wide temperature range, do not clog or dry prematurely and require very little friction. The sharpest stylus ever was that used for scanning tunnelling microscopes.
Blind people use a stylus and slate to punch out dots in Braille, but today the word stylus is most widely used to describe an electronic accessory used to input data into PDAs and tablet computers.
Image: Physorg
Even more recently, an electronic pen has been developed to upload handwriting from any plain paper surface. This device uses a pen and a receiver. The pen contains an infrared sensor, which captures hand movements while writing.
Image: LarimdaME
But technology and the computer has not affected the fountain pen, which is today marketed as a luxury item, featuring along with the Rolex, the Jaguar and other symbols of status. It is said that the most expensive fountain pen ever made was created in 1999 by Caran d’Ache. D’Ache designed this pen in memory of architect Antoni Gaudi. It was made of rhodium-coated solid silver components, with an 18-carat gold nib. It was covered with 5072 full cut top Wesselton VS diamonds, a total of 20 carats. The monogram on the top of the cap is made from 96 half cut rubies.
Eat your heart out Damien Hirst.
About the author:
Tom is a huge tech and gadget geek with a broad range of interests including travel, art and design. Much of his time is spent blogging on CreativeCloud but he also enjoys writing for other blogs in the design niche.
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