A marker pen, fineliner, marking pen, felt-tip pen, flow marker, vivid (in New Zealand), texta (in

Australia), sketch pen (in South Asia) or koki (in South Africa), is a pen which has its own ink source and a
tip made of porous, pressed fibers such as felt.[1] A permanent marker consists of a container (glass,
aluminum or plastic) and a core of an absorbent material. This filling serves as a carrier for the ink. The
upper part of the marker contains the nib that was made in earlier times of a hard felt material, and a
cap to prevent the marker from drying out. Until the early 1990s, the most common solvents that were
used for the ink were toluene and xylene. These two substances are both harmful and characterized by
a very strong smell. Today, the ink is usually made on the basis of alcohols (e.g. 1-Propanol, 1-butanol,
diacetone alcohol and cresols). Markers may be waterproof, dry-erase, wet-erase (e.g. transparency
markers), or permanent.

Lee Newman patented a felt-tipped marking pen in 1910.[2] In 1926, Benjamin Paskach patented a
"fountain paintbrush",[3] as he called it, which consisted of a sponge-tipped handle containing various
paint colors. Markers of this sort began to be popularized with the sale of Sidney Rosenthal's Magic
Marker (1953), which consisted of a glass tube of ink with a felt wick. By 1958, use of felt-tipped markers
was commonplace for a variety of applications such as lettering, labeling, and creating posters.[4] The
year 1962 brought the development of the modern fiber-tipped pen (in contrast to the marker, which
generally has a thicker point) by Yukio Horie of the Tokyo Stationery Company (which later became
Pentel). In 1993 the Copic Sketch markers were released, popularising markers for professional
illustration.

The marker reservoir, which holds the ink, is formed from polyester. The "felt" used for the tip is usually
made of highly compressed synthetic fibers or porous ceramics. Toluol and xylol were used as solvents
for the dye and are still used for the indelible ink in permanent markers. Due to their toxicity, they have
often been replaced with less critical substances such as alkyl or cyclic alkylene carbonates (like
propylene carbonate) in other types of markers. Water content of the ink can be up to 10%. Besides
solvents and the dye itself, the ink may contain additives (e.g. nonylphenylpolyglycol ether, alkylpoly-
glycol ether, fatty acid polyglycol ester, or fatty alcohol ethoxalates) and preservatives (e.g. 2-
Phenylphenol and its sodium salt, 6-acetoxy-2,4-dimethyl-m-dioxane).[5][6][7]