Fountain pen
Historians also took note of the fact that the handwriting in the inventor's surviving journals is of a consistent contrast throughout, rather than exhibiting the characteristic fading pattern typical of a quill pen caused by expending and re-dipping.
While no physical item survives, several working models were reconstructed in 2011 by artist Amerigo Bombara that have since been put on display in museums dedicated to Leonardo.
[5] Noted Maryland historian Hester Dorsey Richardson (1862–1933) documented a reference to "three silver fountain pens, worth 15 shillings" in England during the reign of Charles II, c.
The earliest datable pen of the form described by Bion is inscribed 1702, while other examples bear French hallmarks as late as the early 19th century.
[8] The Romanian inventor Petrache Poenaru received a French patent on May 25, 1827, for the invention of a fountain pen with a barrel made from a large swan quill.
[9] In 1828, Josiah Mason improved a cheap and efficient slip-in nib in Birmingham, England, which could be added to a fountain pen and in 1830, with the invention of a new machine, William Joseph Gillott, William Mitchell, and James Stephen Perry devised a way to mass manufacture robust, cheap steel pen nibs (Perry & Co.).
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.
[17] 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 a dropper – a slow and messy procedure.
[19][20] The tipping point, however, was the runaway success of Walter A. Sheaffer's lever-filler, introduced in 1912,[21] paralleled by Parker's roughly contemporary button-filler.
[22] Some of the earliest solutions to this problem came in the form of a "safety" pen with a retractable point that allowed the ink reservoir to be corked like a bottle.
[26][27] In Europe, the German office supplies company Gunther Wagner, founded in 1838, introduced their Pelikan in 1929, the first modern screw piston-filling fountain pen.
The inter-war period saw the introduction of some of the most notable models, such as the Parker Duofold[31] and Vacumatic,[32] Sheaffer's Lifetime Balance series,[33] and the Pelikan 100.
The ink is taken up and into the feed by way of capillary action (and is often visible in clear demonstrator pens), but is not dispensed onto the paper until the nib makes contact.
From the mid-1830s gold dip pen nibs tipped with iridium were produced in rapidly increasing quantities, first in England and soon thereafter in the United States.
[50] Gold and most steel and titanium nibs are tipped with a hard, wear-resistant alloy that typically includes metals from the platinum group.
[53] The breather hole's intended function is to allow air exchange with the ink reservoir through the channels of the feed, though some modern authorities believe this is a misconception and such venting is unnecessary.
The breather hole also acts as a stress relieving point, preventing the nib from cracking longitudinally from the end of the slit as a result of repeated flexing during use.
[57] 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.
[69] Many other variations on the basic sac and pressure bar mechanism were introduced in the first decades of the 20th century, such as the coin-filler (with a slot on the barrel, allowing the pressure bar to be depressed by use of a coin), the matchstick-filler (with a round hole, for a matchstick) and the blow-filler (with a hole at the end of the barrel, through which one blew to compress the sac).
Screw-mechanism piston-fillers were made as early as the 1820s, but the mechanism's modern popularity begins with the original Pelikan of 1929, based upon a patent that was initially licensed to a Croatian company Moster-Penkala by inventor Theodore Kovacs.
[71] The basic idea is simple and intuitive: turn a knob at the end of the pen and a screw mechanism draws a piston up the barrel, sucking in ink.
[75] There were no moving parts: the ink reservoir within the barrel was open at the upper end, but contained a tightly rolled length of slotted, flexible plastic.
[76] Around the year 2000, Pelikan introduced a filling system involving a valve in the blind end of the pen, which mates with a specially designed ink bottle.
Some very compact fountain pens (for example Waterman Ici et La and Monteverde Diva) accept only short international cartridges.
[81] Many fountain pen manufacturers have developed their own proprietary cartridges, for example Parker, Lamy, Sheaffer, Cross, Sailor, Platinum, Platignum, Waterman, and Namiki.
[82] Standard international cartridges are closed by a small ball, held inside the ink exit hole by glue or by a very thin layer of plastic.
Non-cartridge filling systems tend to be slightly more economical in the long run since ink is generally less expensive in bottles than in cartridges.
[87] Inks ideally should be fairly free-flowing, free of sediment, and non-corrosive, though this generally excludes permanence and prevents large-scale commercial use of some colored dyes.
[83] While no longer the primary writing instrument in modern times, fountain pens are used for important official works such as signing valuable documents.
[95] Many agree that the "personal touch" of a fountain pen has led to such a resurgence with modern consumers looking for an alternative in a world of digital products and services.
