History

The Birth of the Fountain Pen.

Up to this point, all pens were 'dip-pens'. You sat at your desk with a quill or a steel pen, and an inkwell or a bottle of ink nearby, to dip your pen into every few minutes, while you were writing. As yet, nobody had discovered a way of creating a reliable, portable writing instrument that used ink. The idea of a pen that held its own ink-supply had been around for centuries, but early fountain pens were frustrating and unreliable at best. Ink flow was erratic and unpredictable. A pen might write smoothly, or more often, it would leak out ink or write haltingly or not at all.

A fountain pen is a nib pen that, unlike its predecessor the dip pen, contains an internal reservoir of water-based liquid ink. From the reservoir, the ink is drawn through a feed to the nib and then to the paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action. As a result, the typical fountain pen requires little or no pressure to write

Filling the reservoir with ink may be done manually (via the use of an eyedropper or syringe), or via an internal "filler" mechanism which creates suction to transfer ink directly through the nib into the reservoir. Some pens employ removable reservoirs, in the form of pre-filled ink cartridges.

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.

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 fountain pens making use of all these key ingredients appeared in the 1850s. In the 1870s Duncan MacKinnon, a Canadian living in New York City, and Alonzo T. Cross of Providence, Rhode Island created stylographic pens with a hollow, tubular nib and a wire acting as a valve. Stylographic pens are now used mostly for drafting and technical drawing but were very popular in the decade beginning in 1875. Waterman soon outstripped Wirt, along with the many companies that sprang up to fill the new and growing fountain pen market, and remained the market leader up until the early 1920s.

At this time fountain pens were almost all filled by unscrewing a portion of the hollow barrel or holder and inserting the ink by means of an eyedropper. This was a slow and messy procedure. Additionally, fountain pens tended to leak inside their caps and at the joint where the barrel opened for filling. Now that the materials problems had been overcome and the flow of ink while writing had been regulated, the next problems to be solved were the creation of a simple, convenient self-filler and the problem of leakage. Self-fillers began to come into their own around the turn of the century; the most successful of these was probably the Conklin crescent-filler, followed by A. A. Waterman's twist-filler. The tipping point, however, was the runaway success of Walter A. Sheaffer's lever-filler, introduced in 1912, paralleled by Parker's roughly contemporary button-filler

Progress in developing a reliable pen was slow, however, until the mid-19th century. That slow pace of progress was due to a very imperfect understanding of the role that air pressure played in the operation of the pens and because most inks were highly corrosive and full of sedimentary inclusions. The Romanian inventor Petrache Poenaru received a French patent for the invention of the first fountain pen with a replaceable ink cartridge on May 25, 1827. Starting in the 1850s there was a steadily accelerating stream of fountain pen patents and pens in production. It was only after three key inventions were in place, however, that the fountain pen became a widely popular writing instrument. Those inventions were the iridium -tipped gold nib, hard rubber, and free-flowing ink.

Waterman 42 Safety Pen, with variation in materials (both red and black rubbers) and retracting nibs.

During the 1940s and 1950s, fountain pens retained their dominance: early ballpoint pens were expensive, prone to leaks and had irregular inkflow, while the fountain pen continued to benefit from the combination of mass production and craftsmanship. This period saw the launch of innovative models such as the Parker 51, the Sheaffer Snorkel and the Eversharp Skyline, while the Esterbrook J series of lever-fill models with interchangeable steel nibs offered inexpensive reliability to the masses.

By the 1960s, refinements in ballpoint pen production gradually ensured its dominance over the fountain pen for casual use. Although cartridge-filler fountain pens are still in common use in France, Germany, India and the United Kingdom, and are widely used by young students in most private schools in England and at least one private school in Scotland, a few modern manufacturers (especially Mont Blanc and Pelikan) now depict the fountain pen as a collectible item or a status symbol, rather than an everyday writing tool.

Several different patents issued for the self-filling fountain pen design:

• The Button Filler: Patented in 1905 and first offered by the Parker Pen Co. in 1913 as an alternative to the eyedropper method. An external button connected to the internal pressure plate that flattened the ink sac when pressed.


• Lever Filler: Walter Sheaffer patented the lever filler in 1908. The W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company of Fort Madison, Iowa introduced it in 1912. An external lever depressed the flexible ink sac. The lever fitted flush with the barrel of the pen when it was not in use. The lever filler became the winning design for the next forty years, the button filler coming in second.


• Click Filler: First called the crescent filler, Roy Conklin of Toledo commercially produced the first one.A later design by Parker Pen Co. used the name click filler. When two protruding tabs on the outside of the pen pressed, the ink sac deflated. The tabs would make a clicking sound when the sac was full.


• Matchstick Filler: Introduced around 1910 by the Weidlich Company. A small rod mounted on the pen or a common matchstick depressed the internal pressure plate through a hole in the side of the barrel.


• Coin Filler: Developed by Lewis Waterman in an attempt to compete with the winning lever filler patent belonging to Sheaffer. A slot in the barrel of the pen enabled a coin to deflate the internal pressure plate, a similar idea to the matchstick filler. There are nine standard nib-sizes, with three different nib-tip cuts: straight, oblique and italic. The early inks caused steel nibs to quickly corrode and gold nibs held up to the corrosion. Iridium used on the very tip of the nib replaced gold because gold was too soft. Most owners had their initials engraved on the clip.

It took about four months to break in a new writing instrument since the nib was designed to flex as pressure was put on it (allowing the writer to vary the width of the writing lines) each nib wore down accommodating to each owner's own writing style. People did not tend to loan their fountain pens to anyone for that reason. The ink cartridge introduced around 1950 was a disposable, pre-filled plastic or glass cartridges designed for clean and easy insertion. They were an immediate success. The introduction of the ballpoints, however, overshadowed the invention of the cartridge and dried up business for the fountain pen industry. Fountain pens sell today as a classic writing instrument and the original pens have become very hot collectibles.

Nibs:

Fountain pens dating from the first half of the 20th century are more likely to have flexible nibs, suited to the favored handwriting styles of the period (e.g.: Copperplate script and Spencerian Script). By the 1940s, writing preferences had shifted towards stiffer nibs that could withstand the greater pressure required for writing through copy paper to create duplicate documents. Furthermore, competition between the major pen brands such as Parker and Waterman, and the introduction of lifetime guarantees meant that flexible nibs could no longer be supported profitably. In countries where this rivalry was not present to the same degree, for example the UK and Germany, flexible nibs are more common. Nowadays, stiff nibs are the norm as people exchange between fountain pens and other writing modes. These more closely emulate the ballpoint pens modern users are experienced with, but are often described as feeling like "writing with a nail" by those who prefer the feel of a more flexible nib. (Nibs, especially more flexible nibs, can be easily damaged by ballpoint users who write with excessive pressure. Ideally, a fountain pen's nib glides across the paper using the ink as a lubricant, and requires no pressure.)

The British Royal Air Force needed a new type of pen, one that would not leak at higher altitudes in fighter planes as the fountain pen did. Their successful performance for the Air Force brought the Biro pens into the limelight. Laszlo Biro had neglected to get a U.S. patent for his pen and so even with the ending of World War II, another battle was just beginning.

Historical Outline - The Battle of Ballpoint Pens

The first pen-writing instrument was the quill pen dipped into dark paint. There became a need to lengthen the time between dips, eliminate splatter, eliminate smearing and improve pen handling.

• Early 1800s: The first designs for pens that could hold their own ink patented.
• 1884: L.E. Waterman, a New York City insurance salesman, designed the first workable fountain pen, the fountain pen becomes the predominant writing instrument for the next sixty years. Four fountain pen manufactures dominate the market: Parker, Sheaffer, Waterman and Wahl-Eversharp.
• 1938: Invention of a ballpoint pen by two Hungarian inventors, Laszlo Biro and George Biro. The brothers both worked on the pen and applied for patents in 1938 and 1940. The new-formed Eterpen Company in Argentina commercialized the Biro pen. The press hailed the success of this writing tool because it could write for a year without refilling.
• May 1945: Eversharp Co. teams up with Eberhard-Faber to acquire the exclusive rights to Biro Pens of Argentina. The pen re-branded the "Eversharp CA" which stood for Capillary Action. Released to the press months in advance of public sales.
• June, 1945 Less than a month after Eversharp/Eberhard close the deal with Eterpen, Chicago businessman, Milton Reynolds visits Buenos Aires. While in a store, he sees the Biro pen and recognizes the pen's sales potential. He buys a few pens as samples. Reynolds returns to America and starts the Reynolds International Pen Company, ignoring Eversharp's patent rights.
• October 29, 1945: Reynolds copies the product in four months and sells his product Reynold's Rocket at Gimbel's department store in New York City. Reynolds' imitation beats Eversharp to market. Reynolds' pen is immediately successful: Priced at $12.50, $100,000 worth sold the first day on the market.
• December, 1945: Britain was not far behind with the first ballpoint pens available to the public sold at Christmas by the Miles-Martin Pen Company.

The Ballpoint Pen Becomes a Fad

Ballpoint pens guaranteed to write for two years without refilling, claimed to be smear proof. Reynolds advertised it as the pen "to write under water." Eversharp sued Reynolds for copying the design it had acquired legally. The previous 1888 patent by John Loud would have invalidated everyone's claims. However, no one knew that at the time. Sales skyrocketed for both competitors. Nevertheless, the Reynolds' pen leaked, skipped and often failed to write. Eversharp's pen did not live up to its own advertisements. A very high volume of pen returns occurred for both Eversharp and Reynolds. The ballpoint pen fad ended - due to consumer unhappiness.

• 1948: Frequent price wars, poor quality products, and heavy advertising costs hurt each side. Sales did a nosedive. The original asking price of $12.50 dropped to less than 50 cents per pen.


• 1950: The French Baron called Bich, drops the h and starts BIC and starts selling pens.


• 1951: The ballpoint pen dies a consumer death. Fountain pens are number one again. Reynolds folds.


• January, 1954: Parker Pens introduces its first ballpoint pen, the Jotter. The Jotter wrote five times longer than the Eversharp or Reynolds pens. It had a variety of point sizes, a rotating cartridge and large-capacity ink refills. Best of all, it worked. Parker sold 3.5 million Jotters @ $2.95 to $8.75 in less then one year.