Designer Watches | Designer Pens

Feather Pen

The first feather pen was used as a writing instrument around the year 500 BC; dried and well cleaned, feathers were great in combination with ink made of herbal extracts. Swan, goose or turkey feathers were the only ones reliable for writing since their thicker capillary system sucked more ink. The feather pen was made by sharpening the tip of the feather and splitting it in half so that the ink could spread evenly on the writing material. During the last millennium BC, the Egyptians had invented an alternative to the feather pen by using sharp sticks to apply soot to the papyrus.

Instead of a feather pen, the ancient Chinese used brushes made of camel and mouse fur that were passed through clay. In case the material that had to be written on was silk, very fine brushes were used, and they simply consisted of a few hairs added at the end of a rod. Little by little the feather pen and its variants inspired the invention of the modern fountain pens, since people had to find a system that would no longer rely on repetitive dipping of the feather pen in ink. The hardness level of the nibs we use today is definitely one hundred times higher than that of the initial feather pen.

Though tradition has made us believe that the feather pen preserved the real feather as such, history proves otherwise; apparently all the hairs were removed and the feather structure was cut at a comfortable size for the hand. Writing was definitely slower that we know it today, not just because of the many feather pen dippings in ink, but also because of the quality of the materials on which people were writing. The capillary structure of natural feathers was the one to have actually inspired the inventors of the first fountain pen.

Presently, there are plenty of feather pen models, but they are distant imitations of the authentic items that where used in parchment writing. Thus, you can find feather-shaped fountain pens and ballpoints that school-age children usually enjoy. They are pretty cheap and often show special distinctive features such as multicolor writing, and sparkling or even invisible ink use. Considered great gifts for the Christmas holidays or special family celebrations, a modern feather pen preserves only the simulated image of the real writing tool that was so widely used not more than two centuries ago.

Ink Pens

Ink pens have developed very slowly over time, ink pens are practically the quill pens that evolved in the 19th century into the fountain pen. For more than three thousand years the quill was the writing instrument found in most cultures all around the globe. Despite what movies say, the first quill pens used only a small part of the quill as a nib and the rest was thrown away. In other parts of the world like Asia, the pen was replaced with some kind of brushes which are still present in traditional writing forms. The first step in the development of ink pen industry was the invention of steel and the mass production of steel pen points. They were sold in many sizes and shapes according to the large varieties of writing styles. Those simple pen points were simply fitted to a holder and dipped into ink, then you could write a few words and dip again and so on.

If we look back into historical records we can trace the first patent for ink pens, it was owned by Lewis Waterman the man who created the Waterman company. He was the first in the modern history to develop a fountain pen model without any flowing problems. It is true that pens with ink carrying capacity had existed for more than one hundred years before him, but all those models suffered from common problems such as ink leaks. In 1702 a Frenchman called M. Bion created a fountain pen that was very advanced for those days. In America the fist to obtain a patent in the pen industry was Peregrin Williamson who got his recognition in 1809. Furthermore the first self filling pen was recorded by Jacob John Parker in 1831, yet the common problem for all these old ink pens remained ink spills and material issues, this is why they had a close to zero commercial success.

The mechanism of ink pens was simple, they contained three parts, the first was called the nib, the second the feed and the third was the barrel, which bound the nib and the feed together. Lewis Waterman’s genial idea was to introduce a small hole in the nib for the air to enter, and three small grooves in the feeding mechanism, the combined solution successfully prevented ink spilling. As for the reservoir, the first ink pens with reservoir used an eyedropper, and then, from 1915 self filling sacks of rubber were used. The sack was usually pressed with a metallic plate to produce the needed pressure that once released would suck the ink inside the reservoir.