The History of Pen
Some of the things we have come to take for granted in everyday life have a rich and vibrant history. This is especially true of the ubiquitous pen. It comes in various different forms and millions of people use it everyday. For an invention that changed the way people lived, let us find out how exactly they came about. WRITING BEFORE TIME
The invention of a proper portable pen was not achieved until the later half of the 19th century. To imagine that none of the great writers before that time, from Homer to Shakespeare, were able to write with a simple pen is particularly astonishing.
One of the earliest forms of writing was invented by the Greeks. Unlike the lightweight interpretations of the pen and paper we have today, they used writing instruments made of metal, bone or ivory, to make inscriptions on wax-coated tablets. One can only imagine the measure of inconvenience it entailed, to possess these writing materials that we so effortlessly carry around today.
THE RISE OF THE INKS
It is no wonder then that the first person to invent the written letter was a Grecian scholar, Cadmus. By that time, writing had advanced beyond chiseling pictures on stone and across the world, people devised ways to make writing less cumbersome. One of the first inventions was the ‘Indian Ink’, which was used to darken the surfaces of raised stonecarved hieroglyphics. This ink invented by a Chinese philosopher in 2697 B.C. became ubiquitous by the year 1200 B.C. Meanwhile, other cultures developed inks with the natural dyes found in berries and plants. The invention of inks hence brought writing through the evolution of carving to inking.
Parallel to the invention of inks was the introduction of paper. Paper modified the way people used ink and as a result, the history of the pen saw further developments when the Romans created reed-pens for parchment writing. The reed-pen was made from the hollow tube-like stems of marsh grasses, particularly the jointed bamboo plant. Sharpening one end to create the shape of a pen nib transformed the bamboo stem into a fountain pen. Ink was inserted into the stem and the simple squeezing of the reed pushed the ink to the nib. While the reed-pen no doubt aided writing, it was predictably quite messy!
The writing instrument that dominated for the longest time in history (over one thousand years) was the quill pen. Entering the scene in 700 A.D. the quill is a pen made from a feather. The strongest quills were taken from the outer feathers on the left wing of living birds. The left
wing was preferred because the feathers curved outward when used by a right-handed writer. Among the bird feathers, goose feathers were most common while swan feathers were deemed as a superior grade being scarcer and costlier.