The Fountain Pen – A Brief History

After the dip pens made an exit, fountain pens were the pens of choice by the majority of people. In this type of pen, there is an internal reservoir which stores the liquid ink. A typical fountain pen will not require you to put any pressure while writing as the ink is drawn through a feed to the nib and then finally to the paper. It just requires capillary and gravity, not mechanical pressure!

The typical “fountain pens” had reservoirs that could be filled either manually by using an eye dropper or a syringe or in a suction way in which the ink would be transferred directly from the nib to the reservoir.

Pace of Advancement

Right from the 10th century when quills were used as the form of writing till the 19th century when the progress in developing a reliable and useful pen was brought into existence the method and pens for writing have been experimented with. The pace and changes happening were slow because people lacked understanding about the differential air pressure and also the corrosive ink made the process worse.

The First Fountain Pen

It was in 1827, that a Romanian Inventor Petrache Poenaru invented the first fountain pen with a replaceable ink cartridge. This was the first design that allowed for smooth and easy writing, without having to deal with unwanted ink dripping and scratching troubles.

Mass Production

An iridium-tipped gold nib, hard rubber and free flowing ink were the only ones which made the process of using fountain pens more common and also popular. During the 1880s these fountain pens began to get manufactured in bulk amounts.

Waterman and Writ were the most principal producers of the bulk orders for the fountain pens during the era and then Waterman ousted Writ from the competition and remained the world leading producer till the year of 1920.

Then there were huge alterations made in the overall design features of the fountain pen, generally because of the persistent problem of manual filling of ink and also the messy leakage problem. This is when Waterman came up with a design called twist filler which solved many of the the problems.

In 1940’s and 1950’s the dominance of fountain pens were at the peak as early ball point pens were very expensive and many had leakage problems. It was during this decade that Parker 51, Scheaffer Snorkel and Eversharp Skyline gained heights!