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Indranil Sarkar
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
True, This!
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! itself is nothing!
1
to
live
for
Cambridge
Dictionaries website the saying emphasizes that "thinking and writing have
more influence on people and events than the use of force or violence".
Beginning of writing: Writing is the physical manifestation of a spoken
language. Written language, however, does not emerge until its invention in
Sumer, southern Mesopotamia, c. 3500 -3000 BCE. This early writing was
called cuneiform and consisted of making specific marks in wet clay with a
reed implement. In India and in China writing was associated with religious
ritualistic acts. The Mahabharata was written in the 2 nd or 3rd millennium. The
Harappan and the Swaraswati civilization had the custom of writing down
their social and intellectual activities.
Defn.of a pen: The term pen originates from Latin penna
meaning feather. A pen is a writing implement used to apply ink to a
surface, such as paper, for writing or drawing.
Origin of Pen: The Pen has a curious evolutionary history. Beginning with a
Reed pen in 3000 BCE, it has reached the stage of a Digital pen in the 21 st
century. In the evolutionary journey it has crossed the stages of Quill Pen,
Dip-Pen, Nip-Pen, Fountain pen, Ball Pen, Roller Ball Pen, and Marker pen.
As early as 4,000 B.C., people used crude pens consisting of hollow straws or
reeds that supported a short column of liquid. During the 500s B.C., people
began to make pens from the wing feathers of such birds as geese and
swans. The shaft of the feathers was hardened, and the writing tip was
shaped and slit to make writing easy. These feather pens were known as
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quill pens, and they were widely used until the development of steel-nib
pens in the 1800s.However,even before that there was the use of Reed
pens which were made of Reed found in the marshy banks of rivers. In
Bengali/Sanskrit reeds are called Khag. The reed was cut into pieces of 7
to 10 inches and one end was sharpened for inscribing words or pictures on
papers or papyrus. Reed pens were used in India during the Saraswati
civilization in the 2nd or 3rd millennium. Reed pens were slowly replaced by
quills from about the 7th century. As a matter of fact Reed pens gave way to
Quill pens when papyrus was replaced by animal skins around 100B.C.After
the fall of the Roman empire, the Romans could not manage Reed easily
and started using Quill pens as an alternative. Quill pens continued till 18 th
century. Quill pens were used to write and sign the Constitution of the United
States in 1787.
In India: In India the history of pen and writing goes back to Saraswati
Civilization /Harappan Civilization which existed in the 2 nd or 3rd millennium
when Rigveda was written.
However, there is a funny but sad story regarding the pen used by Lord
Ganesha while writing the Mahabharata.
French
Government
patented
it
May
1827.But,
in
England,
Bartholomew Folsch received a patent in 1809 for a pen with an ink reservoir.
The story of watermans experiment: L. E. Waterman, an insurance
salesman, purchased a writing contraption with its own ink reservoir. But
when it leaked, ruining a sale, he got an idea for a better one and decided to
make it himself. In those days a salesman often wore a vest chain with a
small metal container holding a vial of ink in one pocket and a collapsible
penholder in the other. Waterman examined several so-called pocket pens
and saw that none of them had a mechanism for the sure control of ink flow.
He determined to invent one. Applying the principle of capillary attraction, he
designed a feed with a groove for air intake and three narrow slits in the
bottom of the groove. As air bubbles interred, they pressed against the ink in
the barrel and the ink descended through the slits in a uniform flow to the
pen point.
This device was so novel that the Patent Office granted a patent in 1884,
only a few months after the filing. Waterman claimed that his new
mechanism would "prevent the excessive discharge of the ink when the pen
is in use." It was the first practical fountain pen and its three-fissure feed
became the standard principle for all other makes produced thereafter.
Waterman started assembling his pens on a kitchen table in the rear of a
cigar store. In September of 1885 he started to advertise. After that
Watermans Ideal rode the road to fortune.
The first pens were long tubes with a cap fitted on a projection at the top of
the barrel. The cone cap, sliding over the end, did not come until 1899.
Colour was first used in 1898 with the hexagon holder. A self-filling piston
replaced the reloading eye dropper in 1903. In a 1908 model, the barrel was
made with a movable sleeve which exposed a metal bar; by finger pressure
the bar squeezed a soft rubber sac. Up to this time there had been no sacs in
fountain pens.
By the late 1800s, inventors had perfected an early version of the fountain
pen. This pen represented a major improvement over previous pens, because
it featured an ink reservoir and a capillary to feed. Earlier pens held only a
small amount of ink at a time and had to be repeatedly dipped in ink.
First Ball Pen: The first ball point pen to replace the then common "fountain
pen" was introduced by Milton Reynolds in 1945. It used a tiny ball bearing
which rolled heavy gelatin ink onto the paper. Its price was $10 at the
beginning and had a slogan It writes under water. However it was not the
Reynolds who invented the Ball Pen. The idea of using a rotating ball to
distribute the ink to the paper was developed by the American inventor John
H. Loud. The Jewish-Hungarian journalist Lszl Br in 1930. John J. Loud of
Weymouth in 1888 and Van Vechten Riesburg in 1916 were awarded with the
patents to market the Ball pens. Ballpoint pens received little notice until
World War II (1939-1945). Many pilots began using ballpoint pens during this
conflict, because such pens did not leak at high altitudes. After the war,
ballpoint pens became increasingly popular. Soft-tip pens and rolling-ball
pens both were introduced during the 1960s.
Digital Pen: Our age is called the Digital age. Keeping pace with the time
our inventors have supplanted the erstwhile fountain pen or more novel Ballpen by digital pens. A digital pen is an input device which captures the
handwriting or brush strokes of a user, converts handwritten analog
information created using "pen and paper" into digital data, enabling the
data to be utilized in various applications. For example, the writing data can
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redecoration
of
thoughts,
decoding
mans
mind
and
Links/References/Quotes:i.www.wikipedia.org
ii. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab33#ixzz3tB1XwH2C
iii.www.historyworld.net
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iv.www.hindumythology.com
v. http://www.ancient.eu/writing/(Jashua J.Mark)
v.www.sheaffer.com
i.s/02-12-2015