Pens in History

The earliest form of writing probably evolved from scratching on surfaces with stone or bone implements, this being man's first  crude attempts to record his world for posterity.

Probably the earliest methods of writing which involved using pen and paper were developed  by the Greeks  and involved the use of metal, bone or ivory implements which were used to mark wax coated tablets. With the invention of inks, most likely by the Chinese around 3000 B.C., papyrus and parchment papers replaced the clay tablets and by Roman times a crude reed pen was in use, in conjunction with bamboo pens.

Whilst paper had also been invented in China, this had been kept secret and only surfaced several hundreds of years later, around 700 A.D. in Japan, although not until the 1400’s was paper more widely used in Europe.

But the really significant writing instrument has been the quill pen, which has sustained for in excess of 1,000 years. The most effective quills were utilized from the five outer wing feathers, more often the left wing which suited right hand writers in curving away from the writer.

The preferred choice of bird to supply the quills would be the swan, but the rarity of this bird made the goose the more common choice, with crow feathers the bird of choice for fine line writing.

There were a number of preparation steps necessary before the quill could be used, involving firstly trimming the quill to a length of around eight inches, then partly or completely removing the ‘fletching’, then followed by a hardening process, often immersion in hot sand.

Medieval manuscripts show a thin quill stick, bereft of feathers, dispelling the traditional view of a ‘feathered quill pen’.

The quill is naturally soft and waxy, and this is not best suited for writing use.

The cutting and fashioning of the end of the quill into a nib shape was a quite intricate process, requiring the use of a sharp ‘pen’ knife. In 1618, in Martin Billingsley’s ‘The Pens Excellence’, a handbook for writers, seven essential steps were listed, and he introduced the list in the following manner:--

“After you have gotten you a good pen-knife well edg'd and smooth'd upon a hoane, and a good second quill, either of goose or raven, scraped with the backe of your knife, begin to make your pen thus”.

Quill pens are unfortunately time consuming to prepare, high maintenance and don’t last long, so not best suited to speed writing.

Throughout the 19^th century a variety of pen designers/inventors attempted to find an effective successor to the quill, all suffered from the difficulty of effectively holding and dispelling the ink, without  sporadic and unwanted gushes of ink ruining the attempted script.

Eventually,  in 1884 Lewis Waterman patented his fountain pen which had an effective ink reservoir and innovative nib, and the modern fountain pen was born.