Fountain Pens

Writing has been a practice thousands of years back since the human civilization began. Archeologists in the recent years discovered drawings and writings in the caves that gives a clear understanding of knowledge through writing. Mankind preserved his thoughts by engraving on the stones, cave walls, palm leaves and hieroglyph inscriptions through sharp stones, reeds, quills and metals.

Ink when invented, replaced the act of scratching and engraving to writing by dipping the quills in the inkpots. It later became difficult to write for long hours with a thin quill. Therefore, after catching the idea of hollow channel in the feather that could store ink, the early inventors created a fountain pen in its raw form.

It traces that the first fountain pen was owned by an Egyptian, Hassan El Mamoud in 969 AD, whose manuscript from Fatimid dynasty was translated by an Egyptian Scholar that read about his pen without any dipping in the ink. Another incident evidences about a pen made of gold with its own ink tank, which presented to a Caliph. It leaked the ink since its mechanism did not cover all aspects therefore it was reordered. On modification, the ink leakage problem fixed however, the pen wrote fluidly on the paper and the ink disappeared as soon as the pen lifted away from the paper.

Later on, no such improvements were found for quite a long time until in 1702, a Frenchman; M. Bion designed a fountain pen that proves to be the first complete fountain pen. Then in early 1800’s, fountain pens were produced massively especially by a British, John Scheffer who introduced half-quill and half-metal pens. Initially, the sheep’s gut stored ink while all other methods of ink storage were a hassle to manage.

From the start of the world to the present, man is always in need of an invention. Supporting the famous saying “Necessity is the mother of invention”, Lewis Waterman after years of practice, knowledge from M. Bion and modifications on the pen finally, came up to the first man who patented the fountain pen in year 1884. The 18th century introduced the mass selling of a fountain pen.