[mstone]

heineda, on 08 October 2009 - 03:10 PM, said:

This response is not related to fountain pens, but to the point of manufacture. We do not make anything in the USA anymore. I have a friend that recently closed his mens clothing store, in part because he was comitted to selling clothing that was made in America. As of now, there is no clothing made in America. None. I think this is the problem with our economy and should be our presidents primary concern - not health care. We import all of our steel from China. If we went to war tomorrow with China we could not build a single weapon to fight with. America needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, including pen manufacturing.

This is a nice rhetorical position, but the actual numbers say that the US is one of the top two manufacturing economies in the world. (China may finally be producing more, but they don't separate mining and a couple of other items from manufacturing, so it's hard to be sure.) The US has a massive trade deficit, but not because of a lack of domestic production as much as ridiculous appetite for consumption. The US is also 4th in manufacturing output per capita (behind Germany, Japan, and Italy). What the US does not produce any more are labor-intensive, low-margin, high-volume products. This is normal, and evolutionary--the US took those jobs from England a bit over 100 years ago, when it had the right mix of industrialization and labor costs to make that move profitable.

[LouisA]

Bill Smith, on 14 October 2009 - 04:55 PM, said:

... all they have to do is stop underwriting American debt by declining to buy any more US T Bills.

While this may seem true it is something the Chinese cannot do. Nor can they cash in their T-Bills. They are caught in a classic Catch-22 situation. They have so much money invested in T-Bills that if they stop buying the value will do down and if they attempt to cash in their T-Bills in any large number the value will drop even more. So to keep the value of their T-Bill investments at at acceptable rate, they have to keep buying.

[sumgaikid]

Seems to me that the gist of the entire "debate" over the decline of the fountain pen
industry really wasn't over the fact that American companies didn't "save" their com-
panies by going to the piston-filler,but rather that the technology of communication
changed at such a rapid pace as to leave the notable fountain pen companies "in the
dust",so to speak. The only way any of them could survive was to go to or create a
niche market for themselves. This doesn't mean that there was/is anything wrong with
using a fountain pen,just that it's no longer the primary form of communication anymore.


John

[Mille]

sumgaikid, on 08 October 2009 - 01:12 PM, said:

...
Slowly,but ever so surely,to the point
that taking the time to teach writing skills in school today is a lost
art. The key factor in learning to write cursively(no matter what method
is used)is that is that the writer creates a style that is personally
their own--one that they're comfortable with. Cursive writing marks us
as individuals,not robots.
...

I understand you want to go back to The Good Old Days. However I find the statement that cursive writing sets us apart from robots, not only is utterly stupid, it is also insulting the most people who have ever lived.

This post has been edited by Mille: 03 November 2009 - 12:23 PM

[sumgaikid]

Mille, on 03 November 2009 - 07:22 AM, said:

sumgaikid, on 08 October 2009 - 01:12 PM, said:

...
Slowly,but ever so surely,to the point
that taking the time to teach writing skills in school today is a lost
art. The key factor in learning to write cursively(no matter what method
is used)is that is that the writer creates a style that is personally
their own--one that they're comfortable with. Cursive writing marks us
as individuals,not robots.
...

I understand you want to go back to The Good Old Days. However I find the statement that cursive writing sets us apart from robots, not only is utterly stupid, it is also insulting the most people who have ever lived.

I have to disagree. My statement is that cursive writing is a personal thing,a talent that
takes time to master. Like any skill,there is a sense of fulfillment once it is mastered.
It is or becomes an indvidual thing. No two people that write cursive write in exactly the
same way. It has nothing to do with going back to the "good old days",but learning a skill
that is one way that sets one person apart from another. I don't think that insults are in-
volved or intended. It is losing a skill that seperates us one from another. We all end up
writing in block printing because we lose an art that enhances our personality.


John

[Mille]

sumgaikid, on 03 November 2009 - 01:51 PM, said:

Mille, on 03 November 2009 - 07:22 AM, said:

sumgaikid, on 08 October 2009 - 01:12 PM, said:

...
Slowly,but ever so surely,to the point
that taking the time to teach writing skills in school today is a lost
art. The key factor in learning to write cursively(no matter what method
is used)is that is that the writer creates a style that is personally
their own--one that they're comfortable with. Cursive writing marks us
as individuals,not robots.
...

I understand you want to go back to The Good Old Days. However I find the statement that cursive writing sets us apart from robots, not only is utterly stupid, it is also insulting the most people who have ever lived.

I have to disagree. My statement is that cursive writing is a personal thing,a talent that
takes time to master. Like any skill,there is a sense of fulfillment once it is mastered.
It is or becomes an indvidual thing. No two people that write cursive write in exactly the
same way. It has nothing to do with going back to the "good old days",but learning a skill
that is one way that sets one person apart from another. I don't think that insults are in-
volved or intended. It is losing a skill that seperates us one from another. We all end up
writing in block printing because we lose an art that enhances our personality.


John

No two people print the same.

[sumgaikid]

Mille, on 03 November 2009 - 08:58 AM, said:

sumgaikid, on 03 November 2009 - 01:51 PM, said:

Mille, on 03 November 2009 - 07:22 AM, said:

sumgaikid, on 08 October 2009 - 01:12 PM, said:

...
Slowly,but ever so surely,to the point
that taking the time to teach writing skills in school today is a lost
art. The key factor in learning to write cursively(no matter what method
is used)is that is that the writer creates a style that is personally
their own--one that they're comfortable with. Cursive writing marks us
as individuals,not robots.
...

I understand you want to go back to The Good Old Days. However I find the statement that cursive writing sets us apart from robots, not only is utterly stupid, it is also insulting the most people who have ever lived.

I have to disagree. My statement is that cursive writing is a personal thing,a talent that
takes time to master. Like any skill,there is a sense of fulfillment once it is mastered.
It is or becomes an indvidual thing. No two people that write cursive write in exactly the
same way. It has nothing to do with going back to the "good old days",but learning a skill
that is one way that sets one person apart from another. I don't think that insults are in-
volved or intended. It is losing a skill that seperates us one from another. We all end up
writing in block printing because we lose an art that enhances our personality.


John

No two people print the same.

No two people write the same,either.


John

[eric47]

sumgaikid, on 03 November 2009 - 05:00 PM, said:

Mille, on 03 November 2009 - 08:58 AM, said:

sumgaikid, on 03 November 2009 - 01:51 PM, said:

Mille, on 03 November 2009 - 07:22 AM, said:

sumgaikid, on 08 October 2009 - 01:12 PM, said:

...
Slowly,but ever so surely,to the point
that taking the time to teach writing skills in school today is a lost
art. The key factor in learning to write cursively(no matter what method
is used)is that is that the writer creates a style that is personally
their own--one that they're comfortable with. Cursive writing marks us
as individuals,not robots.
...

I understand you want to go back to The Good Old Days. However I find the statement that cursive writing sets us apart from robots, not only is utterly stupid, it is also insulting the most people who have ever lived.

I have to disagree. My statement is that cursive writing is a personal thing,a talent that
takes time to master. Like any skill,there is a sense of fulfillment once it is mastered.
It is or becomes an indvidual thing. No two people that write cursive write in exactly the
same way. It has nothing to do with going back to the "good old days",but learning a skill
that is one way that sets one person apart from another. I don't think that insults are in-
volved or intended. It is losing a skill that seperates us one from another. We all end up
writing in block printing because we lose an art that enhances our personality.


John

No two people print the same.

No two people write the same,either.


John

And no two snowflakes are alike. ;)

[Chthulhu]

eric47, on 03 November 2009 - 11:28 AM, said:

And no two snowflakes are alike. ;)

Even the "precious snowflakes?" They seem pretty cookie-cuttered to me ... <G>

[WSkopar]

diplomat, on 08 October 2009 - 08:39 PM, said:

Hello everybody.
Yesterday I was thinking about a couple of evidences:

• There are no American fountain pens with piston filling mechanism;
  
• In the long run, pre-war European pen makers were more successful in keeping building fountain pens throughout their history;

Ok, I understand that both sentences may be questionables. But I think that if I better specify what I mean, we can find a common ground on it.

Americans do something that they're really good at; Mass Production. I say this in general terms.

MacDonalds, Ford, Chevrolet, Burger King, KFC, and so on. America has been mass-producing since the turn of the 20th century. It's something they we're good at, and quickly made America into an economic giant. I guess you could say USA had the highest standard of living thanks to capitalism from well built but mass produced items.

The rule applies in all markets, lets take photography. Kodak is the biggest American brand to set foot in the photography, and it all started thanks to the Kodak Brownie. Introduced in 1900 for the price of $1; Kodak's popular slogan at the time was "You push the button, we do the rest." inexpensive cameras for everyone to own. and they mass produced the brownies, and got profit from all the film developing too.

These days since digital has stepped in, its all about either Nikon or Canon, with Sony, Pentax, and Olympus trailing behind, of course there are niche markets, where Hasselblad, Leica, and Zeiss Ikon step into, all European!

I believe back in the 20's and 50's there was more competition in many industries! Today markets have turned into monopolies. Camera; Canon or Sony? Burger; Macdonalds or Burger King? Commercial Jets; Boeing or Airbus? Computers; Apple or Microsoft?

Let's take an example. Cadillac in the early 1900's were the premier luxury car of the time. These days a luxury car is a BMW, Mercedes, Maserati, Rolls-royce, etc. GM now owns Cadillac, and they're part of this huge company, and therefore in the process loses their charm I guess. Maybe they're still big in America, but Maserati and Rolls-Royce still have their prestige. But then Rolls-royce only make 200 cars a year.

These days we've reached the stage where good just doesn't cut it, and people will pay top dollar for the best! Exclusivity, Name, prestige, price, pedigree all factor in these days for what people want in niche markets. Fear not Americans you still have some top prestigious companies making good heaphones, like Grado, and Etymotics.

I think some pen brands have gone down this fate where they flourished in their era and died in the end from it.

[rhosygell]

The American pen companies suffered the same fate as the American auto industry today by being too big and too slow to react to changing market needs. This does not say that the product was inferior, undesirable or in any way defective - it simply was not what the market needed at the time.
European pen companies were and are much smaller and more pro active in changing their product mix, however it does nor preclude their eventual failure under the weight of competition from elsewhere.

This post has been edited by rhosygell: 04 November 2009 - 07:55 PM

[mstone]

sumgaikid, on 03 November 2009 - 08:51 AM, said:

I have to disagree. My statement is that cursive writing is a personal thing,a talent that
takes time to master. Like any skill,there is a sense of fulfillment once it is mastered.
It is or becomes an indvidual thing. No two people that write cursive write in exactly the
same way. It has nothing to do with going back to the "good old days"

It certainly isn't, since in the "good old days" it was expected that a person employed to produce business writing would faithfully duplicate the house style, not (horrors) deviate from the norm. The concept of personalized handwriting as an element of popular culture had an exceptionally brief run (probably no more than a couple of generations, and to some degree is more a modern phenomenon than historic).

[Johnny Appleseed]

mstone, on 04 November 2009 - 02:12 PM, said:

sumgaikid, on 03 November 2009 - 08:51 AM, said:

I have to disagree. My statement is that cursive writing is a personal thing,a talent that
takes time to master. Like any skill,there is a sense of fulfillment once it is mastered.
It is or becomes an indvidual thing. No two people that write cursive write in exactly the
same way. It has nothing to do with going back to the "good old days"

It certainly isn't, since in the "good old days" it was expected that a person employed to produce business writing would faithfully duplicate the house style, not (horrors) deviate from the norm. The concept of personalized handwriting as an element of popular culture had an exceptionally brief run (probably no more than a couple of generations, and to some degree is more a modern phenomenon than historic).

Depends on what you call a couple of generations. By the 1890s, the early Palmer and late Spencarian schools were having to adapt their teaching styles to a market that expected some degree of personalization in their handwriting. It was a trend that I believe began in the Victorian upperclass in the mid 1800s (perhaps in an effort to distinguish themselves from mere "clerks" - perfect handwriting was often frowned upon among the wealthy, who preferred to use a "distinctive" handwriting), and spread downward. You can particularly see it manifest in the obsession with graphology in the early 1900s and the notion that ones handwriting was a reflection not of a style to be perfected, but an individual window into ones personality.

John

[sumgaikid]

Apparently some folks have taken my comment about cursive writing being taught
less and less in school thinking that I was referring to teaching Spencerian
or another "perfect" script to children today. That was not my point at all.
My point was simply that teaching a form of writing(as opposed to NOT teaching
any form at all)helps to individualize a child. The writing styles that were
taught were something to attain to,not to be copied exactly. Everyone has little
stylistic "quirks" that they subconsciously put into their handwriting. It's
these "quirks" that create a personal style of handwriting.


John

[Mille]

Johnny Appleseed, on 04 November 2009 - 11:13 PM, said:

Depends on what you call a couple of generations. By the 1890s, the early Palmer and late Spencarian schools were having to adapt their teaching styles to a market that expected some degree of personalization in their handwriting. It was a trend that I believe began in the Victorian upperclass in the mid 1800s (perhaps in an effort to distinguish themselves from mere "clerks" - perfect handwriting was often frowned upon among the wealthy, who preferred to use a "distinctive" handwriting), and spread downward. You can particularly see it manifest in the obsession with graphology in the early 1900s and the notion that ones handwriting was a reflection not of a style to be perfected, but an individual window into ones personality.

John

Thank you John! This is a very interesting comment. You got me interested in this. Do you you know where I can read more about this?

This post has been edited by Mille: 05 November 2009 - 06:04 AM