I’ll wager most of you have heard of the phrase: ‘Signed, sealed and delivered’, yes? Meaning that something is finished, over and done with and out of your hair? Completed and a load off your chest? The ‘signed’ and ‘delivered’ parts are obvious. A signed document which was delivered safely to its intended location. But what of ‘sealed’?

I wasn’t able to track down the history of this phrase, but I’d guess that it goes back centuries, back to when seals and sealing-wax and sealing-stamps were still mandatory desktop accessories, much like the inkwell, blotting paper or ponce-pot. Seals were common fixtures to documents or parcels from their creation, centuries ago, right up into the 19th century, when they slowly died out.

What is a Seal and why were they used?

A seal is either a mark of authority or, more commonly, a mark of identification and an anti-tampering device. Usually, a seal is your coat of arms or, if you did not have a coat of arms, then your seal was your monogram (initials). The reason seals were created was to protect important documents or packages from being tampered with and to provide evidence to the recipient of said document, if it had. To understand why seals existed, you have to understand that until fairly recently, the modern postal system as we know it, simply did not exist. Back in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, if you had to send a letter or an important document to a friend who lived several miles away, the only way to do it was to entrust your important letter or document to a messenger, who would be paid to deliver the message on horseback.

If the document was very important or private in nature, there might be people out there who would not want the document to reach its intended recipient, or, they might want to find out the contents of the document before the recipient had a chance to open it himself. Another possibility is that the messenger himself might want to know the contents of your document and might ride off with it or deliver it to an anauthorised third party.

Given all these security risks, letter-writers who needed or wanted to keep the contents of their letters and documents secret, and between themselves and their correpondents, would put wax seals on their documents before sending them off to be delivered. The seals were always placed on the document in such a manner that it would be impossible to read the document, without first breaking the seal. Usually, the seal was done on a fold in the paper, on the flap of an envelope or over a bow or ribbon tied around a package. Traditional sealing-wax is very dry and brittle. Once the seal is made and set hard, it cannot be removed without breaking it to pieces. Recieving a letter or other document with the seal broken would mean that someone had read the contents before you had.

Simply gluing or licking an envelope-flap shut was not considered security enough back in the 16 and 1700s. Envelope-flaps can be eased open with a bit of hot steam from a boiling kettle and the document can be opened and then just as easily, reglued shut again, and the recipient would be none the wiser. And you can steam an envelope open – I’ve done it myself – and when you see how easy it is to do, you’ll understand why people used seals instead.

How a Seal is Made

Seals are pretty things, aren’t they? Well…they are, if you know how to make one properly. It can be a bit tricky, as it involves molten wax, an open flame and a sealing-device. The last thing you want is your precious will, house-deed or letter containing your secret plans, to go up in flames! So, how is it done?

Well first, with great care.

1. Having finished writing and signing your document, you folded it up in such a way that once folded, a central flap was created in the middle of the folded piece of paper, for example, by folding the bottom of the letter up 1/3 of the way and folding the top of the letter down 1/3 of the way, so that they met neatly in the middle of the sheet.

2. Once the paper is folded and you’re satisfied it’s not going to move, you got out a stick of sealing-wax, of a colour of your choice. Stereotypically, sealing-wax is always red, but any number of colours can be used. You hold the stick of wax over the centre of your document, where the two edges of the paper meet and then you start to melt the wax.

3. Melting the wax is a tricky process that requires some practice. Using either a candle, a cigarette lighter or matches (at least six), you apply an open flame to the tip of the wax-stick so that the wax heats up until it’s in a liquid state. The wax will now drip onto the paper. Since sealing-wax is rather dry, this can take a while to happen…be patient. Some sticks of wax come with a wick inside them, like a candle. If that’s the case, you can just light the stick like an ordinary candle and tip it upside down to let the wax drip onto the paper.

Sticks of sealing-wax with a pair of stamps and seals.

4. Once a suitable amount of wax has dripped onto the paper, roll the stick of wax around in your fingers (to prevent any stray drippings of wax from falling onto the paper), blow out, or put away your flame and pick up your sealing-device. Do not apply the device directly to the wax after melting it! In its current state, it’s still far too liquid in consistency, and all you’ll get is a big, fat nasty waxy smudge.

5. When the wax starts solidifying, press your sealing-device firmly and evenly into the middle of your pool of wax. Then, slowly lift it up, off the wax. If you’ve done it correctly, you should now have a nice, neat, wax seal.

6. If you’re doing more than one seal, be sure to clean the base of your sealing-device before using it again. This can be done by wiping it down with water to clear away any wax or oil that might have stuck to the underside of your sealing-device.

What can you use to make a seal?

These days, people use coins or other, highly-decorative items to be pressed into sealig-wax to create seals. Coins are popular because they have the heads of monarchs, or national coats of arms or emblems on them. But what did people use traditionally?

Back in the days when you had to have a seal on your letter for security reasons, you most likely had your own sealing-stamp. A sealing-stamp is a stamp with your coat of arms or your monogram engraved in reverse, on the bottom of the stamp so that when it was pressed into the wax, it left a clear impression of your coat of arms or your initials.

A sealing-stamp with the letter ‘A’ engraved in its base.

The other common sealing-device was your signet-ring. ‘Signet’ comes from the Latin word meaning ‘sign’, from which we also get the word ‘signature’. So it was literally your ‘signature-ring’, the device you used to sign all your important documents. Not many people wear signet-rings anymore, but they used to be very common. A signet-ring is basically a portable sealing-stamp. Such rings were large, and had your coat of arms or your monogram engraved on the top. To use your ring, you removed it from your finger and pressed it into the wax, much like the sealing-stamp. Some rings were specially made so that you could press the ring into the wax without having to remove it from your hand, and without fear of getting hot wax on your fingers.

A gold signet-ring with the family crest and motto engraved in it in reverse, so that it comes out, right-way-around when pressed into a pool of wax.

Once the seal was made and imprinted, it dried hard and brittle and it would keep the letter or document closed and would provide clear evidence to the recipient if the document had been opened prior to reaching him, due to the fact that once a seal is broken, it is impossible to put it back together. A new one has to be made, with the same sealing-device. Since the unintended recipient probably didn’t have this device with him, tampering of a document was immediately obvious.

The 1920s. The ‘Roaring Twenties’, a decade of money, new invention, new fashion, new styles and…new fountain pens. Arguably, the most famous fountain pen of the Roaring Twenties was something that was just as bright and flashy as the decade which made it king: The Parker Duofold. While perhaps rather boring-looking today and a bit…bland…the Duofold was revolutionary back in the 1920s.

Pens of the Period.

In the early 1920s, the majority of fountain pens were still made of a material called hard-rubber, also known as ‘ebonite’. Ebonite was alright for making fountain pens with, but it had a fair few problems. It was brittle, it came in only three colours (red, black or black & red), and it was rather hard to make something so boring look appealing-enough for people to buy it. Back in the 1910s and 20s, pen-makers tried to jazz up black hard-rubber pens by having them wrapped in gold or silver patterns, or by ‘chasing’ them. ‘Chasing’ was a process whereby a really hot metal stencil was stamped onto newly-made pen-barrels. This process gave the pen a nice, wriggly pattern on it. But back then, these were the only ways you could dress up a pen.

Apart from that, most pens were still lever-fillers, or eyedropper fillers. The Parker Pen Company which came up with the Duofold, wanted something different. Something that didn’t have a lever sticking out of the side of the pen, something which wasn’t black, or chased or swathed in metal. It wanted something new, to welcome in a prosperous decade of jazz, bootlegging and skyrocketing crime-rates…

The Birth of the Duofold.

The original Parker Duofold was born in 1921. An employee at the Parker Pen Company in Janesville, Wisconsin, USA, came up with the idea that the company should try something totally different. Their newest pen would be big, it would be bold, it would have the newfangled ‘button-fill’ system and instead of being black, it would be bright, fire-engine red. Well…actually it was called ‘Chinese Red’ at the time. While the button-fill fountain pen (an invention of Parker’s) was not particularly new in 1921, it had the advantage over rival pen company, Sheaffer’s ‘lever-filler’ in that the filling-button could be capped by a ‘blind-cap’ at the top of the pen, completely hiding the filling-system from the user’s eyes, creating a cleaner-looking pen. Parker big-wigs were a little nervous about all this, espcially the idea to make the pen red. They knew from experience that dyes in the rubber-making process tended to make the finished product rather brittle, and that was saying something, considering how weak hard rubber could already be. What was even scarier was the price that this new pen would be sold at: $7.00.

Seven dollars is piddlesticks today, but 80 years ago, you could buy dinner for your entire family for seven dollars. It was NOT a sum of money to be sneezed at, again, another thing for the company executives to be worried about. How could a pen so expensive possibly sell?

Despite everything, despite all their misgivings, the Parker Duofold, affectionately named the ‘Big Red’ due to its size and heft, was an instant runaway success! The American public loved the new pen for its size, ink capacity, easy-to-use and discreet filling-system and of course…it’s colour!

The Duofold Hits the Shelves.

When the Duofold came out, it was big, red, expensive, succesful and…bandless. Really early Parker Duofolds (if you can find them), came without a gold cap-band around the lip of the screw-down cap. This was a big problem. As I said, hard rubber is prone to cracking and splitting. Without a cap-band on the pen to strengthen it, the lid could just crack in half like an egg, if an overenthusiastic writer screwed the cap on too tightly, or posted the pen too forcefully. Within a couple of months of release, the Duofold was withdrawn and reissued with a nice, fat gold cap-band on it. These Duofolds, because of the size and thickness of the band, were called “raised-band” Duofolds.

As the years went by, the Duofold started coming out in a wider variety of designs. The original ‘Big Red’ (called the Senior model), was followed by the Junior model (which was a half-inch shorter), followed by the Lady’s Duofold (with a ringtop instead of a pocket-clip), followed by the Duofold Special (which was Senior-sized, but was thinner in barrel-diameter). The biggest change came in 1926.

Pens Play with Plastic.

In the mid-1920s, a new material arrived on the production-line. It was strong, versatile, mouldable and it was called…celluloid. Celluloid was to pen-manufacturers what a truckload of Lego blocks is to a little boy who’s used to playing with wooden blocks. All of a sudden, pen-designers could whip out all kinds of new colours and patterns and shapes and suddenly, a whole new world of design-opportunities was open to creative and artistic pen-makers. The first pen-company to jump on the celluloid bandwagon was Sheaffer in 1924. Not to be outdone, Parker started producing its Duofolds in all kinds of wonderful new colours. First in Lapis Blue (a blue and white pattern), then mottled green, then in 1927, yellow.

Yellow was bold, bright, beautiful…and brittle. Yellow Duofolds were made from 1927 until 1929, but they would barely have been made for one month if George Parker, the company head, hadn’t insisted on them. The problem was that the yellow dye used in the plastic made the resultant pens incredibly brittle, even moreso than the hard-rubber which the celluloid replaced! Today, yellow Duofolds command very very high prices. Finding one in mint-condition is tricky, and when you do, it won’t be cheap.

Duofolds continued to change. In 1928, the first and last time that two-bander models were produced, saw the introduction of vest-pocket and women’s fountain pens with three cap-bands instead of the usual two and regular-sized fountain pens with two thin bands instead of the usual one thick one.

In 1929, with the Art Deco movement gathering steam, the original Duofold made one final change in design: It became ‘streamlined’.

Previous to 1929, the Duofold was very angular and tubular. The cap and barrel ends cut off in sharp, right-angles. In 1929, these right-angles were changed to smoother, more sloping ends, which saw them being transformed…in a manner of speaking…to something more in-style with the coming of the 1930s.

In the history of writing, one can never forget a man named Roy Conklin. Conklin was an innovator, and his innovation and invention was the first self-filling fountain pen: The Conklin Crescent-Filler.

The crescent-filler is ridiculously simple in its construction; it’s filling mechanism consists of just three components: The brass filling-tab, the rubber ink-sac and the hard-rubber locking-ring. And yet, it was a total runaway success. It was so popular that one of America’s most famous writers, Mark Twain, became an enthusiastic promoter of Conklin’s newfangled *gasp* self-filling fountain pen!

My own Conklin Crescent-Filler, ca. 1914. The locking-ring can be seen on the right, with the brass filling-tab above it. This photograph is rather decieving, the tab is actually quite shiny.

To understand how revolutionary this was, you have to realise that before Conklin came along, all fountain pens were ‘eyedropper-fillers’. This meant that you pulled the pen apart, filled the pen-barrel with ink from an eyedropper, and then you put the pen back together to write with it. While eyedroppers could hold enough ink for you to write the bible, the big problem with them was that they could leak, and filling a pen-barrel with an eyedropper was messy at the best of times.

Conklin’s pen, on the other hand, was so elegant, so revolutionary, and yet so simple, that other pen-makers were kicking themselves that they hadn’t thought of it sooner! Here is how it works:

IMPORTANT NOTE: These instructions are given with the understanding that your pen is in 100% full, working condition. Do NOT attempt ANY of these steps if your pen has not been restored to an operational level. It could do irrepairable damage to a priceless antique!!

1. Unlock the tab.

All Conklin Crescent-Fillers have a round, hard-rubber ‘locking-ring’ that wraps around the barrel. The locking-ring, when ‘closed’, prevents the filling-tab (the ‘crescent’ in the pen-name, since the tab is shaped like a semi-circle) from being depressed accidently (and ejecting ink all over the place!). By sliding the ring around the barrel so that the narrow opening of the ring is directly underneath the tab, the pen can now be filled. Given that most Conklin Crescent-Fillers are now upwards of 90 years old, this should be done delicately!

2. Depress the tab.

With the tab unlocked and the locking ring open, you can unscrew your ink-bottle, put the pen into the ink-bottle and press down on the brass tab. This doesn’t have to be done fast or forcefully…take your time. Depressing the tab presses down on the pressure-bar inside the pen-barrel, which is attached to the underside of the tab. The pressure-bar, a wide, flat piece of steel, in turn, presses down on the flexible, rubber ink-sac inside the pen. Pressing the sac flat forces out any ink or air inside it.

3. Release the tab.

Move your finger off the tab. Now the pen will start to fill. Releasing the tab means that the pressure-bar springs up, and the ink-sac, depleted of air, will now form a vacuum, which will suck ink into the pen. Give the pen a few seconds to fill, and then remove it from the ink. The tab should be pressed twice for the best filling.

4. Close the ring.

Once the pen’s full, remove it from the ink-bottle, close the ring and wipe down the pen of excess ink. It is IMPORTANT to CLOSE THE RING. If you don’t, there’s a good chance of the tab being accidently depressed, and squirting ink all over the place.

While the Conklin Crescent-Filler certainly wasn’t very pretty to look at, it was nonetheless a massive success, because it answered everyone’s main concerns about fountain pens at the time:

1. It did not leak.
2. It had good inkflow.
3. It was quick and easy to fill.

Conklin’s production of the Crescent-Filler pen started in 1901, and didn’t end until the mid 1920s, by which time, better-looking and smoother-filling pens had come onto the market.

…or “the devolution of the pen from the quill to gel”, as suggested by one of my readers.

The ability to read and write has always been one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Reading and writing allowed for the recording, protection and spread of ideas, information and new discoveries. But we would never have been able to read about all these great inventions, discoveries and ideas if someone hadn’t first discovered how to write them down. So, what were the first writing instruments, and how did they evolve over time?

The First Pens.

The first writing instruments were stylii, that is, sticks which were specially-shaped so as to press wedge-shaped characters into soft wax or clay tablets. Created by the Sumerians several thousand years ago, these stylii and the wedges which they pressed, became the first form of writing, known as ‘cuneiform’. By arranging the wedge-shapes by size, distance and design, the Sumerians created the first alphabet and system for writing.

For several years, cuneiform writing was the only form of writing available. From cuneiform, came brush-writing. Brushes with thin tips dipped in inks made from water and natural dyes made from fire-soot, became the first pens. These pens allowed for more a more clearer form of writing than could be produced on wax or clay tablets, by making marks on a type of cloth called papyrus, which was made from reeds. Papyrus is the word from which we get the modern ‘paper’. The peoples of some countries (mostly East Asian countries) still use brush-pens today, to write characters in Chinese, Japanese or any other Asian language.

With trade and travel, writing gradually spread around Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. The Sumerians who invented writing, lived in the Mediterranean, so the nearest countries, such as Eygpt and Italy and Germany and Greece, were the first places to pick up on this new invention of ‘writing’.

The Egyptians created a form of picture-writing known as hieroglyphs, again, using brush pens. While very pretty, hieroglyphs took a long time to write, and they could be difficult to read. It was evident that a clearer form of writing was required, and with it, better tools.

The Romans are responsible for creating the alphabet which most of us recognise today. Originally, the alphabet was all in capitals and all the letters were very angular. The letter ‘u’ was written as a ‘v’. This was because the Romans wrote their text (in Latin) onto stone slabs, using hammers and chisels. The writing produced was easy to read; it was clear legible and faster (in a manner of speaking), than pictograph writing. But hammering letters and words into a block of stone with a chisel and a hammer was tiring and slow, and you couldn’t make curves!

Reeds and Quills.

Eventually, people moved back to inks and papers. The Romans kept extensive records of a lot of things which went on in their empire, and to do this effectively, they turned to scrolls of papyrus, and a new kind of pen…the reed. Reed pens were pretty easy to work with. You took a sharp knife and made a diagonal cut in the tip of the reed. You continued cutting until you had a triangular point. You put a slit down the middle of the point with your knife, and then dipped the reed into the ink to write with. Reeds were sufficient, but constant re-sharpening and cutting made them impractical. Ink softens the reed as you write, and once the reed got too soft, you had to start cutting out another pen-point.

By the medieval period, yet another type of writing instrument had replaced the reed. The quill.

The quill was a feather, a big, primary flight-feather from the wing of a large bird (usually a goose). Quills were plentiful, but they took a while to make. It went something like this:

Having found the feather, you first had to wash it. Then you had to dry it. You then took out a knife and cut off all the barbs (the soft, frilly bits on the sides of the feather), which left you with a long, relatively stiff, strong shaft. Contrary to what you see in the movies, you didn’t write with the barbs still on the feather because they just got in the way.

Once the pen was cleaned, dried and de-barbed, you buried it in sand and put it over a fire. Heating it up like this in the sand caused the pen to dry out and become nice and stiff and hard. Once the pen was removed from the sand and the fire and was cleaned properly, you took out a knife and started cutting the tip into the feather (much like with a reed pen).

Because the quill was stronger and stiffer, it could write significantly better than the reed pen. Different ways of cutting the pen-point allowed for different styles of writing. It’s at this time that the German Gothic or ‘Blackletter’ style of writing, synonymous with the Middle Ages, began to appear. By cutting the quill-point a certain way, you could create text with wide up-down strokes, and thin horizontal strokes. It was during this period, that the writing-surface changed from papyrus to vellum (dried animal hides) and eventually to paper.

The quill lasted for several hundred years. Several great documents such as the Bible, the American Declaration of Independence and many classic works of literature from the 18th century, were written with quills. The diary of Samuel Pepys, the famous English naval administrator of the 1600s, would have been written entirely with a quill. William Shakespeare wrote all his plays with a quill. Even though the quill had to be sharpened and reshaped every so-often, much like the reed pen before it, for centuries, it was the only pen that people had. The small knives which we have today which are called ‘pen-knives’ comes from the period when the quill was king. Your pen-knife was the tool which you used to cut the tip of your pen with. No pen-knife, no quill, no writing.

Quills remained the mainstay of writing for several centuries. The flexible nature of the pen-points, after they had become softened somewhat, with ink, allowed people to create even more styles of writing. The expressive, decorative, loopy, thick-thin styles of handwriting that came about during the 17th and 18th centuries, such as roundhand, Copperplate and Spencerian, were the direct, natural result of the writing properties of the quill.

The Steel Pen.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, a little something called the Industrial Revolution swept through Europe. With the power of wind, water, fire and steam, machines began to be manufactured which could produce all kinds of things. All these new inventions naturally created a lot of paperwork. Mankind needed a better kind of writing instrument to put all the wages and salaries and information down on paper. Then one day, an intelligent man thought to himself that if pen-points were made of something tougher, stronger and which would last longer, he could make a fortune. What if pen-points, instead of being the easily-worn-out tips of feathers, were actually made of something tough and durable…like…metal?

Using steam-powered presses, special moulds and sheets of metal, the first mass-production of metal pens were created, at the end of the 18th century. While revolutionary, it would not be until the 1830s that real, practical mass-production of steel writing-pens, which could be sold in little boxes at stationers’ shops, really began.

The invention of a simple, cheap, durable pen-point which could be made in its thousands, revolutionised the writing world. Now, if you wanted to write, all you had to do was go down to the shop and buy a box of pens and a pen-holder (the long shaft which the metal points fitted into), and you could write away to your heart’s content. Such was the popularity of this new invention that in schools, it lasted until the 1930s.

Steel pens, of the kind which started being made in the 1830s.

The metal pen caused all kinds of changes in the world. For the first time, cheap, reliable pens were available in their thousands to the masses, which greatly boosted literacy rates and helped to improve education. Great stories such as the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ canon were written the steel pen, as well as works by Mark Twain and Jules Verne. Now, authors could concentrate on their thoughts, rather than on whether their pen-point was going to snap in half and spray ink all over their desks.

While the metal pen allowed for quicker and more comfortable writing, one crucial problem still remained. Portability.

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. Inkflow was erratic and unpredictable. A pen might write smoothly, or more often, it would leak out ink or write haltingly or not at all.

That all changed in the 1880s, with the ingenuity of a frustrated and angry insurance-broker by the name of Lewis Edson Waterman.

Popular pen-lore will tell you that in 1883, Waterman, a somewhat successful insurance-broker, was talking turkey with a rich client. The client had a nice, fat contract worth several thousand dollars, sitting on the deal-table. All Waterman had to do was take out a pen and sign on the dotted line. Waterman was so excited about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that he brought with him, a newfangled ‘reservoir’ pen…today known as a ‘fountain pen’. While signing the contract, Waterman’s pen threw a sickie, and chucked up black ink all over the precious piece of paper. Waterman was mortified and ran off to find another pen to seal the deal with. By the time he had, the client had upped and left and sealed the deal with another broker, leaving Waterman fuming and frustrated. The story then goes that he charged off to his brother’s farm to make improvements to the fountain pen which we all thank him for today.

1910s Mabie-Todd & Co. Swan eyedropper filler, similar to the kind of pens that existed in Waterman’s lifetime.

That story, while it makes for fascinating marketing, is generally believe to be untrue (and is even debunked by the Waterman Pen Co. itself). But what really did happen was that Waterman had made one crucial discovery.

The importance of air-pressure in making a successful pen.

Before Waterman had his brainwave, all the fountain pens in the world leaked. They leaked in buckets or they leaked not at all, refusing to write, sealing up like oysters. It was Waterman who learnt how to break open the oyster to get at the stuff inside, but without having it gush out like a firehose. Using a thin, hard-rubber rod with little slits cut into it, called a ‘feed’, Waterman learnt that, properly seated underneath the nib of a fountain pen, it could regulate the flow of ink purely by air-pressure. As ink went down two of the channels cut in the feed, air went up the third channel into the ink-reservoir, creating a balanced air-pressure which allowed for a safe and dependable flow of ink. That same principle has guided all pen-makers ever since.

Diagram showing the three-channel feed (right), which allows for proper regulation of inkflow in fountain pens
Picture by Richard F. Binder; richardspens.com

With a pen that would at last write reliably, Waterman had made a breakthrough which would net him thousands of dollars. Soon after, he founded the Waterman Pen Company in 1884. And while poor Mr. Waterman died less than 20 years later in 1901, his ingenuity had paved the way for greater things to come.

The Waterman Pen Company in Manhattan, New York City, ca. 1910

Continued from Part I, above.

While Waterman had discovered the crucial key in regulating ink-flow, he hadn’t yet figured out how to stop a pen leaking! In the 1880s, all the way until the 1910s, most pens were called ‘eyedropper-fillers’. This meant that to fill the pen, you pulled it apart and filled the barrel (main tube) of the pen with fountain pen ink from a regular eyedropper. Eyedropper pens held a ton of ink, but they were prone to leaking from the seams. To stop this, people tried all kinds of things such as tighter-fitting caps, screw-down barrels and retractable-nib pens (which were called ‘safety pens’), but it wasn’t until the 1890s that a man named Roy Conklin came along with the solution.

Ca. 1920 Waterman black hard-rubber gold filigree retractable-nib eyedropper safety-pen.

Roy Conklin and the Self-Filling Pen.

Mr. Conklin had brains. Why should the ink be stored inside the barrel of the pen, where it was liable to leak out and create a damn mess all over the place? Surely, he reasoned, it would make more sense to store ink inside a special, inner-tube or ink-sac, inside the barrel of the pen, to prevent it from leaking? Yes, Conklin liked this idea. With careful experimenting, he soon devised a way for ‘sac-pens’ to be filled with ink, using the simple physics of vacuums and air-pressure. The result of his labours came out in 1901 – The famous Conklin Crescent-Filler, the world’s first successful self-filling, non-leakable, mass-produced fountain pen!

Ca. 1901 Conklin Crescent-Filler in black hard rubber.

The Conklin Crescent-Filler was revolutionary. Almost overnight, Conklin had hit upon something which people had been praying for, for centuries. A pen with a portable ink-supply that was easy to refill and which didn’t leak and create a mess! Indeed, the Conklin Crescent-Filler was so popular that the American author Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), became an enthusiastic user and promoter of Conklin’s new product. The famous writer’s photograph and testimonies appeared on several 1900s Conklin pen advertisments, and Twain used a Conklin Crescent-Filler from ca. 1903 until he died seven years later in 1910. In one testimony, Twain said that the Conklin pen was wonderful because it didn’t roll off the desk and fall onto the ground and its reliablity saved him from previously, frequent utterances of profanity.

The Golden Age of the Fountain Pen.

With Waterman and Conklin’s new inventions, the golden age of the fountain pen, from about 1900 until the 1960s, was born. Pen companies were founded almost overnight and designs and filling-systems ranged from the ingenious to the insane, from the remarkable to the repulsive. Pen companies such as Parker, Sheaffer, Wahl-Eversharp, Onoto, Conway-Stewart, Montblanc, Pelikan and dozens of others sprung up, all within years of each other.

Many famous pen-designs came out over the next few years, from the Parker Jack-Knife, Duofold, Vacumatic, ’51’ and ’45’, the Sheaffer Lifetime, Balanace, Snorkel, the Wahl-Eversharp Art Deco and Skyline, and one of the most famous pen-designs ever, the Montblanc 149.

Now, fountain pens were stylish, dependable, ever-changing and innovating, they were portable and unique. But it wasn’t to last.

One of the biggest problems with fountain pens was that they leaked in the unpressurised compartments of early airplanes. For pilots and navigators who required an inky writing instrument at 5,000ft, the fountain pen was far from ideal. Also, fountain pen ink, which is largely water, was prone to smudging.

Mr. Biro and the…Biro.

In the 1930s, Laszlo Biro (pronounced ‘beero’) was a Hungarian journalist. As a journalist, he obviously did a lot of writing every single day, but he was frustrated by the fact that fountain pen ink, being mostly made up of water, was easily smudged. Biro noticed that the ink used in printing-presses dried almost instantaneously because it was thicker and contained less water. When he filled up his fountain pen with this ink, though, the only thing that happened was that the pen clogged up like a broken toilet. Laszlo and his brother Georg had to figure out a new type of ink, and more importantly, a new type of pen.

The ballpoint pen as we know it today, was finally perfected (in a manner of speaking), in the 1930s and 1940s. During this time, the fountain pen was still king, and would continue to be king for another 20-40 years. The fact was, that early ballpoint pens, like the fountain pens they were designed to replace, leaked. And when they leaked, they caused a hell of a mess. Unlike fountain pen ink which is mostly water, and therefore relatively easy to wash off, ballpoint ink is a thick, pasty substance which can stick to and stain clothes like paint. Nobody wanted a pen which stained their clothes even worse than fountain pens, so nobody bought them. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the ballpoint pen was really perfected and pen-companies such as Parker, started to market them. One of the first successful ballpoint pens was the Parker Jotter, which came out in 1954. Over 50 years later, and the same pen is still being made today.

There are several myths, legends and beliefs (mistaken or otherwise), about the love of my life; the fountain pen. Here, I will try to answer or debunk some of these assumptions and confusions.

1. Fountain pens leak.

No they don’t. No good fountain pen will ever leak. I can understand where people get this impression from – fountain pens are delicate instruments filled with water-based ink. They HAVE to leak, right!? Well…no, they don’t, actually. You see, in the earliest days of fountain pen invention, yes, leakages were very common. This caused pen-manufacturers around the world to refine, alter and improve the fountain pen to such a level that it doesn’t leak at all. The very design of the pen was so that it would not leak. As a result, no functional, good-quality fountain pen will leak.

“But I can see ink on the nib!” you might say.

Yes, you might see this. But this is not classified as leaking. A real, leaking pen will have great drops or smudges of ink dribbling out of it. Ink on the nib is called ‘nib-creep’ (yes, that is the actual term for it). Nib-creep is caused by minute imperfections in the cutting of the nib-tines, and by various brands of fountain pen inks. As I explained in “Natural, Inky Goodness”, fountain pens work by gravity and capillary action. If the slit in the pen-nib is cut poorly, and there are rough spots in it, ink is liable to seek out these spots and seep out of the slit and go all over the nib. This does not damage the pen, nor is it a sign of a poorly functioning pen, it just means that the slit of your pen needs smoothing to prevent this. If you can’t be bothered sending your pen away to a repairman to do this, then I suggest trying a different brand of ink.

2. Fountain pens can’t be used on airplanes.

There is a “Yes” and “No” kind of answer. The concern here is that the pen will leak while you’re up in the air, due to pressure-differences (remember how I said air-pressure regulates inkflow?). So…Does a fountain pen leak in an airplane? Yes, if it’s not cared for properly. Can you safely use a fountain pen in an airplane? Yes, provided you take a couple of very simple precautions.

“What are they?” you ask.

The answer is suprisingly simple. To prevent the pen from leaking during ascent or descent of the aircraft, you must keep the pen in a nib-up position. This means capping the pen and keeping it point-facing-upwards during takeoff and landing. This is best-done by keeping the pen clipped to your shirt-pocket or keeping it vertically inside your coat-pocket during these times. Doing this keeps ink away from the nib and prevents leakage. It allows free-flow of AIR during the pressure-changes, without the chance of ink dribbling out of the nib.

Once airborne and safely at cruising altitude, it is perfectly safe to take out your fountain pen and fill in the crossword on that long, 18-hour flight from London to Singapore. Just remember to keep the pen capped, and nib-up when not in use. Also, ignore people who tell you that fountain pens DO NOT leak on planes. Believe me, they do. It’s happened to me, but only because I was stupid. The tip about keeping the pen nib-up when it is not in use is a failsafe technique for preventing this kind of catastrophe.

3. Gold nibs are better than steel nibs.

Yes and no. This myth surfaced back in the old days, probably during WWII. During the war, steel was an important metal in the American and British war-efforts, so fountain pen nibs were all made of gold. In Japan, gold was seen as an important war-material (why, I don’t know), but it caused Japanese pen-manufacturers to make their nibs out of steel. Unfortunately, stainless-steel had not been fully developed at that time, which caused the steel nibs on Japanese pens to rust. Gold, being a largely unresponsive metal, doesn’t rust in contact with the water-based ink of fountain pens, so it was naturally the better metal to make nibs from. In this respect, yes, gold is better than steel. Or at least, it was true back then. Now in the 21st century, there really is no difference, since stainless steel doesn’t rust like its WWII predecessor did.

“But is there any difference in writing feel or quality?” you might ask.

Some say ‘yes’, some say ‘no’. Certainly, gold looks a hell of a lot nicer, but does it really affect the writing-quality? No. In this respect, a gold nib is just as good as a steel nib. The ONLY place where this might make a difference, is when you have a fountain pen with a flexible nib. Gold, being a softer metal, flexes and bends more comfortably and smoothly than a steel nib, which is more rigid and firm.

4. You can use any kind of liquid ink in a fountain pen.

Absolutely not! ONLY…and…ONLY fountain pen ink should be put into a fountain pen. Do not try Indian ink, powdered ink, Chinese ink or iron-gall ink (especially not IGI, because it has shellac and other nasty things inside it, which will destroy your pen entirely) in your fountain pen. Fountain pen ink is about 99% water, with specially-developed pigments inside it, to give it whatever special and distinctive colour it has. This is the only thing you should put into your pen (that, or water). Ink from manufacturers such as Parker (Quink), Sheaffer (Skrip), Waterman, Montblanc, Lamy, Visconti, Private Reserve or Noodlers is generally safe to use (steer away from Montblanc blue/black, though; that has shellac in it and it may not be 100% advisable to use this ink).

5. Fountain pens can shoot ink incredible distances!

A staple of slapstick cartoon comedy since the 1930s, is the scene where a character grabs a fountain pen (usually a lever-filler), and opens the lever in the pen-barrel, to eject a stream of ink into his adversary’s face, drenching him in blue liquid. Or maybe you watched “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and saw Sean Connery squirt his enemy with a pen full of black ink. Can a fountain pen do this in real life?

Yes, and no. Can a fountain pen squirt ink? Yes, depending on the type of filling-system. Squeeze-fillers and some lever-fillers can actually do this rather effectively. Can fountain pens squirt ink considerable distances? No. The ‘range’ of ink-squirtage is actually rather pathetic if you care to try it in real life. You’d be lucky to get a couple of feet, or even twelve inches, if you were really lucky.

6. If someone else takes your fountain pen and writes with it, it’ll permanently damage it and you won’t be able to use it anymore.

You’d be surprised how many people still believe this. It is FALSE. The fear here, is that if you have a fountain pen, and a friend borrows it, even for two micro-seconds, to jot down a phone-number, the nib will be irrepairably shaped to his hand and that this’ll somehow damage the nib. Or alternatively, you can’t let someone use your fountain pen because the nib has grown ‘used to’ your hand and that anyone else using the pen will damage the nib.

100% bupkiss.

YES, a fountain pen’s nib WILL wear down as you write with it. YES, a fountain pen MIGHT ‘mould’ itself to your hand and your particular style of writing. But NO, this doesn’t mean you can’t let someone use your pen and fear that he’ll alter its writing characteristics. It takes DECADES of DAILY, INTENSE WRITING to wear down a fountain pen nib. A five-second jaunt in someone else’s hand is unlikely to damage it, unless they press the nib into the paper like a ballpoint pen (which will cause the nib to break!) or if they slam it into the paper, causing the tines to bow and break.

Feel free to post questions and pester me with other fountain pen myths or legends that you might be interested in, and I’ll try and answer them.

In this day of high-speed internet-access, ipods, iphones, PCs, laptops and blackberries, it may come as a shock to many, that there are still weirdos out there who write stuff by hand. You know, with a pen, on a piece of paper? What manner of people are these who would subject their delicate digits and palms to such torture and who *gasp!* even gain some sort of masochistic pleasure out of it?

Well, I happen to be one of them, so I’ll try and provide an answer.

As a writer (albeit an unpublished one), I do a great deal of pen-pushing every single day, and my choice as my instrument of torture is the subject of this article; the classic, gold-nibbed, ink-filled fountain pen. What? Yes they still exist! Yes, people still make them, and what’s more, there are still people who use them, such as myself. I love fountain pens!

My reasons for loving them are perhaps not always obvious or understandable to others, but here I will try and explain my affection for these archaic ink-splatterers and why I choose them over some sort of more modern writing apparatus.

The first reason is that fountain pens are functional history. They last for decades, centuries, even. Think for a moment, of all the great novels written with fountain pens, think of all the great and famous documents signed with them, drafted with them, written with them. The Instruments of Surrender for WWI and WWII were all signed with fountain pens from leading pen-manufacturers, such as Parker and Waterman, with designs just as famous as the companies themselves. The last ‘Sherlock Holmes’ stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in the 1920s, during the last years of his life, were all written with a very famous fountain pen called the Parker Duofold. Fountain pens last for decades and, with proper maintenance, can last for decades more. As an avid collector of fountain pens, I can firmly and safely say that a fountain pen made 80 years ago writes just as well today as it did back in 1922.

My second reason for liking fountain pens is the sheer uniqueness of them. How many people out there still use fountain pens? Probably not many. Using a fountain pen sets you apart from the crowd. It makes you different, unique, special. Unfortunately in the modern world, using a fountain pen also means that you have to be a filthy-rich snob who happens to be a doctor, lawyer, judge or Donald Trump. So a fountain pen makes me look like a rich snob, does it? That’s just yet another reason to use one! They make you look good! And everyone wants to look good.

My third reason for using fountain pens also happens to be the chief reason why I don’t use ballpoint pens. Variety. Or, lack of variety, when it comes to ballpoints. A ballpoint pen is bland, boring, yawn-inducing and about as eye-catching as a plank of wood. It’s plain, utilitarian, boring and comes in only four ink-colours – Blue, red, black and green. A fountain pen, by comparison, comes in more varieties than Heinz, Skittles and Smarties combined. Countless shades of inks to write out an entire rainbow, a million different pen-designs, manufacturing materials and dozens of nib-styles to create almost any kind of script imaginable. The loopy, narrow-wide roundhand script of the American Declaration of Independence would be impossible to write with a ballpoint pen, but perfectly achievable with a fountain pen with a flexible nib.

On the surface, the fourth reason doesn’t seem to make much sense, but once I’m done, I think it should make about as much sense as to why you don’t make teapots out of chocolate.

Cost is the fourth reason why I use a fountain pen over another writing instrument. Yes, I know, fountain pens can be expensive. Them being expensive surely means that they can’t possibly be cost-effective, can they? Well, yes they can.

A ballpoint pen costs $1. For that one dollar, you get a pen that’s non-refillable, that’s ugly, that writes like a hammer and chisel, and which causes cramps and frustration and which you’ll never use until it’s out of ink, anyway. Most likely, you’ll chuck it out into the bin where it’ll eventually end up in landfill, its disgusting, pastey ink leeching into the groundwater. Yum!

A decent fountain pen can be got for around 20-40 dollars. For this money, you have something that will LITERALLY last your whole life. You have something that’s light, comfortable, easy to use, stylish, smooth, refillable and which you’ll be proud to pass onto your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (should you live that long!). A bottle of ink costs $20 and for twenty bucks, you have 50ml of ink in a glass bottle (that’s recyclable!), which will last for two, three, maybe even four years, before you need to buy another one (this is based on personal experience). You buy your first fountain pen say, at the age of 18 when you’ve just left school. 70 years later, you could use that pen to write out your will, with almost no environmental impact (this is for the greenies out there. Think about this, people!) and with major plusses in the pleasure-department. Fountain pens are looking significantly more appealing now, aren’t they?

The fifth and final reason for selecting a fountain pen over a ballpoint pen or indeed, even a rollerball pen, is the most practical reason of all. Sheer writing pleasure and comfort. I’ve heard several people describe writing with a fountain pen as being ‘unique’, ‘a joy’, ‘effortless’, ‘stress-reducing’, hell, even ‘erotic’. There HAS to be something there that’s good, for people to say such wonderful things, right?

Well of course there is. And here, in a nutshell, is that goodness. A fountain pen is just purely a better writing instrument. Both on a technical level, a comfort level and a medical level, and it all boils down to the fact that fountain pens were made to be comfortable writing instruments to begin with. It is built into their very design.

A ballpoint pen works by pressure, and pressure alone. You need to PRESS the pen-point into the paper to create the FRICTION to rotate the ball to pick up the ink to press it into the paper to create the lines. Without pressing, you don’t rotate the ball, you don’t get ink. How long could you write comfortably under these conditions? A few lines? A couple of paragraphs? More than a page? I doubt it.

A fountain pen, by comparison, works purely by the force of gravity and literally nothing else. No pressing, no forcing, no exertion at all, on your part, except mental exercise. Fountain pen ink is mostly water. Not paste. So, it flows, under gravity, under its own weight, through the pen. Simple air-pressure and capillary action is all that is needed to regulate the flow of ink. No pressing needed at all. The weight of the pen concentrating all that weight into the tip of the pen-nib means that you don’t have to add any additional pressure, which means all your efforts can be directed to WRITING instead of digging the Western Front into your notepad. Don’t believe me? Try this test. Get a ballpoint pen and rest the point on a sheet of paper and the barrel between your thumb and index-finger. Push it and pull it along the page. At best, you’ll get a broken line of faint ink. Try the same thing with a fountain pen and you’ll get a nice, strong, even line of ink which never skips or breaks. I’ve done this myself, and yes, it does work.

Given all these wonderful traits, it’s obvious that a fountain pen is a significantly better writing instrument. Do you do a lot of writing? Are you a student in highschool or university? Are you a working-man or woman who writes reports and fills out forms all day? Buy a fountain pen. They’re smoother, more comfortable, more stylish and more cost-effective in the long-run. As a testament to how comfortable these things are, I wrote the entire four-and-a-half page draft for this post with a fountain pen with hardly any wrist-cramps or strains at all. If you have those symptoms, chuck out the Bic Cristal and buy yourself a Waterman Harmonie.

Cheers!

Shahan Cheong