Topic: pen

A pen is a common writing instrument that applies ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing.
Early pens such as reed pens, quill pens, dip pens and ruling pens held a small amount of ink on a nib or
in a small void or cavity which had to be periodically recharged by dipping the tip of the pen into an
inkwell. Today, such pens find only a small number of specialized uses, such as in illustration and
calligraphy. Reed pens, quill pens and dip pens, which were used for writing, have been replaced by
ballpoint pens, rollerball pens, fountain pens and felt or ceramic tip pens. Ruling pens, which were used
for technical drawing and cartography, have been replaced by technical pens such as the Rapidograph.
All of these modern pens contain internal ink reservoirs, such that they do not need to be dipped in ink
while writing.

Types

Modern

Pens commonly used today can be categorized based on the mechanism of the writing tip and the type
of ink:

A ballpoint pen dispenses a viscous oil-based ink by means of a small hard sphere, or ball, which rolls
over the surface being written on. The ball is held captive in a socket at the tip of the pen with one half
exposed and the other half immersed in ink from the pen's reservoir. When the ball rotates, it transfers
the ink - which wets the ball - from the reservoir to the external surface. The ball is typically under a
millimeter in diameter and made of brass, steel, or tungsten carbide. The ink, due to its high viscosity,
does not permeate through paper and does not leave the tip of the pen by capillary action. As such, a
bare minimum amount of ink is dispensed, with the result that the writing dries almost instantly and ink
lasts longer than it does in other types of pen. Ballpoint pens are reliable, versatile and robust, and are
available for a very wide range of prices. They have replaced fountain pens as the most common tool for
everyday writing.

A gel pen works similarly to a ballpoint pen, in that it dispenses ink using a rolling ball held in the writing
tip. However, unlike oil-based ballpoint pen ink, gel pen ink consists of a water-based gel that has a
pigment suspended in it. Because the ink is thick and opaque, it shows up more clearly on dark or slick
surfaces than the typical inks used in ballpoint or felt tip pens. Gel pens can be used for many types of
writing and illustration. Since the gel medium eliminates the constraints of a soluble dye, many new
colors are made possible, as well as some special types of ink; gel pens are available in a wide range of
vibrant or saturated colors, in pastel colors, in neon colors, in metallic colors, in glitter inks, in glow-in-
the-dark ink, and so on.

A rollerball pen is a pen that dispenses a water-based ink through a ball tip similar to that of a ballpoint
pen. As such, gel pens might be considered a subcategory of rollerball pens; however, due to the
widespread knowledge and use of the term 'gel pen', 'rollerball' is in practice typically reserved for pens
which use liquid ink. The lower viscosity of rollerball ink compared to oil-based ballpoint pen ink has
several effects on the pen's performance. Since the ink flows more easily and is more easily absorbed
into paper, more ink is dispensed in general. This changes the writing experience by lubricating the
motion of the tip over the paper. It also results in a solid and uninterrupted line, since the diffusion of
the ink through the paper fills small gaps that might otherwise be left by the ball point. Compared to
ballpoint pens, which dispense a smaller amount of more viscous ink, the writing by a rollerball pen
takes longer to dry on the page and can seep through thin paper such as to become visible on the
opposite side. When the tip of a rollerball pen is held against paper, ink leaves the tip continually by
capillary action in much the same way as would occur with a fountain pen. This can lead to ink blots or
smears. The rollerball pen was initially designed to combine the convenience of a ballpoint pen with the
smooth "wet ink" effect of a fountain pen. Refillable rollerball pens have recently become available;
these generally use cartridges of fountain pen ink.

A fountain pen uses water-based liquid ink delivered through a nib, which is in general a flat piece of
metal with a thin slit extending inwards from the writing tip. Driven by gravity, the ink flows from a
reservoir to the nib through a feed, which is in general a specially shaped solid block of material with
channels and grooves cut into it. The feed delivers the ink to the slit in the nib. While writing, ink is
pulled out of this slit by capillary action. A fountain pen nib, unlike the tip of a ballpoint, gel or rollerball
pen, has no moving parts. A fountain pen reservoir can be refillable or disposable; the disposable type is
called an ink cartridge. A pen with a refillable reservoir may have a mechanism such as a piston to draw
ink from a bottle through the nib, or it may require refilling with an eye dropper. Refillable reservoirs,
also known as cartridge converters, are available for some pens otherwise designed to use disposable
cartridges. A fountain pen can be used with permanent or non-permanent inks.

A felt-tip pen, or marker, has a porous tip made of fibrous material, which normally remains saturated
with ink from the reservoir. As ink leaves the tip, new ink is drawn from the reservoir - which often
consists of a large volume of a similar porous material to that used in the tip - by capillary action and
gravity. As with a fountain pen, ink leaves the tip of a felt tip pen by capillary action when writing on a
porous surface. However, unlike fountain pens, many markers can also reliably write on slick
impermeable surfaces that are wet by the ink, and in such applications ink typically does not continually
leave the pen as it is held against the writing surface. The smallest, finest-tipped felt-tip pens are used
for writing on paper. Medium-sized felt-tips are often used by children for coloring and drawing. Larger
types, often called "markers", are used for writing in larger sizes, often on surfaces other than paper
such as corrugated boxes and whiteboards. Specialized felt-tip pens referred to by names such as "liquid
chalk" or "chalkboard markers" are used to write on chalkboards. Markers with wide tips and bright but
transparent ink, called highlighters, are used to highlight text that has already been written or printed.
Pens designed for children or for temporary writing (as with a whiteboard or overhead projector)
typically use non-permanent inks. Large markers used to label shipping cases or other packages are
usually permanent markers.

A brush pen is a pen whose writing tip consists of a small brush fed with ink from a liquid ink reservoir
similar to those used in fountain pens and rollerball pens. Brush pens might be either refillable or
disposable, and might use either water-based or waterproof ink. The most significant functional
difference of brush pens from felt-tip pens is the far greater compliance of the tip. Brush pens are an
obvious alternative to ink brushes for Chinese calligraphy and Japanese calligraphy, but are now also
commonly used in other forms of calligraphy and by artists such as illustrators and cartoonists. The
primary appeal of these pens to such artists is that they allow a great deal of line width variation in
response to small changes in applied pressure.

A stylus pen, plural styli or styluses, is a writing utensil which does not use ink, but rather makes marks
primarily by creating scratches or indentations in the writing surface. As such, the tip often consists
simply of a sharp metal point. Such tools are also used for other types of marking than writing, and for
shaping or carving in, for example, pottery. The word stylus also refers to a pen-shaped computer
accessory that is used to achieve greater precision when using touchscreens than generally possible with
a fingertip. There are products available that combine a ballpoint tip at one end and a touchscreen stylus
at the other.

Historic

These historic types of pens are no longer in common use as writing instruments, but may be used by
calligraphers and other artists:

A dip pen (or nib pen) consists of a metal nib with capillary channels, like that of a fountain pen,
mounted on a handle or holder, often made of wood. A dip pen is called such because it usually has no
ink reservoir and must therefore be repeatedly dipped into an inkpot in order to recharge the nib with
ink while drawing or writing. The dip pen has certain advantages over a fountain pen; it can use
waterproof pigmented (particle-and-binder-based) inks, such as so-called India ink, drawing ink, or
acrylic inks, which would destroy a fountain pen by clogging, as well as the traditional iron gall ink, which
can cause corrosion in a fountain pen. Dip pens are now mainly used in illustration, calligraphy, and
comics. A particularly fine-pointed type of dip pen known as a crowquill is a favorite instrument of artists
such as David Stone Martin and Jay Lynch, because its flexible metal point can create a variety of
delicate lines, textures and tones in response to variation of pressure while drawing.

The ink brush is the traditional writing implement in East Asian calligraphy. The body of the brush can be
made from bamboo, or from rarer materials such as red sandalwood, glass, ivory, silver, and gold. The
head of the brush can be made from the hair (or feathers) of a wide variety of animals, including the
weasel, rabbit, deer, chicken, duck, goat, pig, and tiger. There is also a tradition both in China and in
Japan of making a brush using the hair of a newborn, as a once-in-a-lifetime souvenir for the child. This
practice is associated with the legend of an ancient Chinese scholar who ranked first in the Imperial
examinations using such a personalized brush. Calligraphy brushes are widely considered an extension
of the calligrapher's arm. Today, calligraphy may also be done using a pen, but pen calligraphy does not
enjoy the same prestige as traditional brush calligraphy.

A quill is a pen made from a flight feather of a large bird, most often a goose. To make a quill, a feather
must be cured through aging or heat-treatment, after which a nib is fashioned from the shaft by cutting
a slit in it and carving away the sides to create a pointed tip. With practice, suitable feathers can be
made into quills quickly and cheaply using no more than a small knife and a source of heat. Due to their
easy availability, quills remained the writing instruments of choice in the west for a long time—from the
6th century to the 19th—before the metal dip pen, the fountain pen, and eventually the ballpoint pen
came to be manufactured in large numbers. Quills, like later metal-nibbed dip pens, must periodically be
dipped in ink while writing.

A reed pen is cut from a reed or bamboo, with a slit in a narrow tip. Its mechanism is essentially the
same as that of a quill or a metal dip pen. The reed pen has almost disappeared but is still used by young
school students in some parts of India and Pakistan, who learn to write with them on small timber
boards known as "Takhti".

History

Ancient Egyptians had developed writing on papyrus scrolls when scribes used thin reed brushes or reed
pens from the Juncus maritimus or sea rush. In his book A History of Writing, Steven Roger Fischer
suggests, on the basis of finds at Saqqara, that the reed pen might well have been used for writing on
parchment as long ago as the First Dynasty, or around 3000 BC. Reed pens continued to be used until
the Middle Ages, but were slowly replaced by quills from about the 7th century. The reed pen, made
from reed or bamboo, is still used in some parts of Pakistan by young students and is used to write on
small wooden boards.The reed pen survived until papyrus was replaced as a writing surface by animal
skins, vellum and parchment. The smoother surface of skin allowed finer, smaller writing with a quill
pen, derived from the flight feather. The quill pen was used in Qumran, Judea to write some of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, which date back to around 100 BC. The scrolls were written in Hebrew dialects with bird
feathers or quills. There is a specific reference to quills in the writings of St. Isidore of Seville in the 7th
century. Quill pens were still widely used in the eighteenth century, and were used to write and sign the
Constitution of the United States in 1787.

A copper nib was found in the ruins of Pompeii, showing that metal nibs were used in the year 79. There
is also a reference to 'a silver pen to carry ink in', in Samuel Pepys' diary for August 1663. 'New invented'
metal pens are advertised in The Times in 1792. A metal pen point was patented in 1803, but the patent
was not commercially exploited. A patent for the manufacture of metal pens was advertised for sale by
Bryan Donkin in 1811. John Mitchell of Birmingham started to mass-produce pens with metal nibs in
1822, and after that, the quality of steel nibs improved enough so that dip pens with metal nibs came
into general use.The earliest historical record of a pen with a reservoir dates back to the 10th century
AD. In 953, Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen which would not stain his
hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib.
This pen may have been a fountain pen, but its mechanism remains unknown, and only one record
mentioning it has been found. A later reservoir pen was developed in 1636. In his Deliciae Physico-
Mathematicae (1636), German inventor Daniel Schwenter described a pen made from two quills. One
quill served as a reservoir for ink inside the other quill. The ink was sealed inside the quill with cork. Ink
was squeezed through a small hole to the writing point. In 1809, Bartholomew Folsch received a patent
in England for a pen with an ink reservoir.A student in Paris, Romanian Petrache Poenaru invented a
fountain pen that used a quill as an ink reservoir. The French Government patented this in May 1827.
Fountain pen patents and production then increased in the 1850s.

The first patent on a ballpoint pen was issued on October 30, 1888, to John J Loud. In 1938, László Bíró, a
Hungarian newspaper editor, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to design new types
of pens, including one with a tiny ball in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along
the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. Bíró filed a
British patent on June 15, 1938. In 1940, the Bíró brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne, moved to
Argentina, fleeing Nazi Germany. On June 17, 1943 they filed for another patent. They formed "Bíró
Pens of Argentina", and by the summer of 1943, the first commercial models were available. Erasable
ballpoint pens were introduced by Paper Mate in 1979, when the Erasermate was put on the market.

Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, a Croatian engineer and inventor, became renowned for further development
of the mechanical pencil (1906) – then called an "automatic pencil" – and the first solid-ink fountain pen
(1907). Collaborating with the Croatian entrepreneur Edmund Moster, he started the Penkala-Moster
Company and built a pen-and-pencil factory that was one of the biggest in the world at the time. This
company, now called TOZ-Penkala, still exists today. "TOZ" stands for "Tvornica olovaka Zagreb",
meaning "Zagreb Pencil Factory".

In the 1960s, the fiber- or felt-tipped pen was invented by Yukio Horie of the Tokyo Stationery Company,
Japan. Paper Mate's Flair was among the first felt-tip pens to hit the U.S. market in the 1960s, and it has
been the leader ever since. Marker pens and highlighters, both similar to felt pens, have become
popular in recent times.

Rollerball pens were introduced in the early 1970s. They use a mobile ball and liquid ink to produce a
smoother line. Technological advances during the late 1980s and early 1990s have improved the roller
ball's overall performance. A porous point pen contains a point made of some porous material such as
felt or ceramic. A high quality drafting pen will usually have a ceramic tip, since this wears well and does
not broaden when pressure is applied while writing.

Although the invention of the typewriter and personal computer with the keyboard input method has
offered another way to write, the pen is still the main means of writing. Many people like to use
expensive types and brands of pens, including fountain pens, and these are sometimes regarded as a
status symbol.

See also

References

External links

Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association