Were Fountain Pens ever more popular then ball points

[jslallar]

In my Missionary school we were allowed long pants after the 5th grade and we did not have congresses, parliamnets, schools or flocks but FP was a must. I also remember that bank would not accept cheques signed with BPs only permanet ink was llowed and onlt once it was established that BP ink is in fact permanent that BP signed cheques started becoming honoured without comment.

[professionaldilettante]

<!--quoteo(post=1113920:date=Jun 25 2009, 04:33 PM:name=meiers)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (meiers @ Jun 25 2009, 04:33 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1113920"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->pencils in zero gravity are a bad idea...

how would you like having pencil shavings float around and breathing them in?

 

Matt<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

 

I'd think they'd use mechanical pencils... But the granite leads would still be a problem.

Wow. I want some of this space aged granite pencil leads. Sure beats this soft graphite stuff I've been using... :roflmho:

[tonyv]

My school of thought is this: even if fountain pens were more expensive in their golden era than ballpoints are today, a person who needed one would suck it up and get one. I mean, they were necessities, after all! For example, smartphones are popular today, and even when they're carrier subsidized, they can cost some dough, yet most people will still get one because they're so darn useful. So, when it comes to pens, laptops, smartphones, anything, willingness to pay comes down to appreciation, necessity, and desire.

[arrow king]

My school of thought is this: even if fountain pens were more expensive in their golden era than ballpoints are today, a person who needed one would suck it up and get one. I mean, they were necessities, after all! For example, smartphones are popular today, and even when they're carrier subsidized, they can cost some dough, yet most people will still get one because they're so darn useful. So, when it comes to pens, laptops, smartphones, anything, willingness to pay comes down to appreciation, necessity, and desire.

 

I was just trolling this thread. First if you consider terminology a certain clarity follows. The original meaning of the term "pen" is the pointed part that carried the ink to the writing surface. What most now call a "nib". Quill "pens" proved better than pointed sticks or reeds because the carried more ink before having to replenish. {in effect a tiny "fountain"}. As the point of the quill wore, a new one could be cut and sharpened to taste with a small knife, called a "penknife" as it was used to fashion the pen. {nib} Quills could be precut with professional knives, or quill cutters {small box like apparatus like a cigar cutter. These were even sold in boxes, like their successors metal nibs, and called, of course quill pens. Quoting from the cover of a small box in front of me:"LONDON...QUILL...NIB PENS...waranted...made with a knife.

 

The second important piece of terminology is the "pen holder". {the handle to which the pen {again, now nib} was secured to facilitate writing, and the method by which ink was obtained... essentially either by dipping in a well, or releasing from an attached fountain. Accordingly a "ball point pen" is really a fountain pen, having its own fountain of ink released by a rotating ball. Not entirely unlike a stlographic pen with its wire nib". It is, in reality a cartridge pen. What served to separate it from what we call fountain and dip pens is that there was no longer the need for a handy well of ink with all its danger to be carried about, or daily poured from master inks to school, shop, bank wells etc. Rather when it dried up or exhausted itself a new refill cartrige was produced.

 

As to the comments on popularity, the third important point is simply factoring cost with utility. The quill nib gave way to the metal nib {again pen} which was as cheap, and more importantly, more durable. These were sold in boxes of 100 or so and attached to cheap wooden pen holders and the method was dipping. Ah yes one of the boons of the industrial age and the disposible society. The touchstone now was that society was becoming more mobile and in search of an attachable fountain for its convience. Least you think I'm putting down dip pens that is hardly the case some of my greatest treasures are sterling silver, gold, mother of pearl etc beauties. The best of these had long ago discovered the flex of gold nibs and that gold worn in not out, to accomodate the writer. Moreover gold did not rust. One would be very foolish to dispose of a gold nib, so the search for a harder "tip" to ward off ware tried everything from rubies and diamonds, in the early days ,to the present irridium. It is no surprise that gold nibs became the standard for the first fountain pens and will continue in the future for quality "pens". A ball point requires no such luxury as pen and cartrige are a single disposible unit. So the question becomes ...popular with who?..schoolteachers, executives, students, pilots, or perhaps ticket writers. As a choice I would guess that most on this forum treasure pens that are "jewerly that writes" and have inherent utility if cared for. The question is like asking if the Volkswagon was more popular than the Rolls Royce or simply more attainable.

 

Anyway enough of my ramble, I enjoyed the thread.

[HHaase]

The discussion of military use of ballpoints always makes me shudder when I think about those terrible Skilcraft pens they always handed out when I was still enlisted. Nothing unique about them to be honest, just a generic plastic bodied 'click' ballpoint with a clip that scraped the heck out of the your thumb webbing.

 

Trough all of my school years in the 1980's into the early 1990's, it was always the Bic Stic or Papermate ballpoint, with a #2 pencil for math. Not until college did I discover gel inks, and by then my penmanship was already destroyed.

 

-Hans

Edited December 19, 2011 by HHaase

[WanderingAuthor]

The first biros were considered unacceptable for signing cheques due to the early ink being able to be remove from a signature bloc on a cheque. It wasn't until Biro managed to invent a suitable ballpoint ink that the banks reversed their policy of requiring cheques to be signed with fountain pen ink. However, there are documents of state and other highly secure documents where specially made inks containing DNA markers of the user are used. I believe each US President has such ink made for them.

David

 

If this statement is accurate - and I must state that I personally suspect it to be an urban legend - such "marked" inks would have to be of relatively recent invention, since the ability to identify an individual's DNA has not been around for that long. Since most documents of state are signed publicly, and in the modern era it would be very hard to erase all trace of evidence that they had been signed (as the Tudors almost succeeded in doing with the act of Titulus Regius - only one copy survives, and contemporaries never questioned why Richard III would have had any motive for killing his own nephews when a law already existed removing them from the royal succession), there would seem to be little practical use for such an ink.

 

I have never heard even a whisper of a suggestion that such specially made inks might exist, and their practical use seems to be limited. Let's say - just for example - that President Obama wished to repudiate his signature on some important piece of legislation. First, he'd have to explain away all the news accounts and photos which dealt with him signing it to begin with. Then, even if the ink on that bill was tested and shown to contain his DNA, he could still claim that the ink had been stolen by someone else, or that someone had obtained a sample of hair, skin, or whatever, replicated his DNA, and manufactured their own forged ink. So even if such an ink existed, it wouldn't really add much to the security of a document.

 

In fact, if there were a use for this sort of ink, I'd think it would lie in a completely different arena, to authenticate the signing of obscure but highly important financial contracts, documents which might receive no public notice whatsoever. And even in that case, it would be just as easy to argue the ink had been stolen or forged as it would be to repudiate any other type of document. You'd really have to have a legal standard of evidence set up to specify just how much weight the presence of such an ink should receive if the document were contested.

 

So, sorry, but in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, I do not believe in the existence of such inks. There do seem to have been experiments conducted on the production of a printing ink (photogravure) containing artificial DNA strands, reported in 2004. I would surmise, without access to the full article, that this is more likely to be related to the development of synthetic DNA as an authentication device intended to replace other security measures such as holograms on branded products. As far as I know, this has not yet been put into practice - after all, how is a consumer to test the synthetic DNA to determine if the product is genuine or not? Individuals just don't have that capacity yet. The photogravure ink experiments might have related to anti-counterfeiting measures contemplated for high value currency, but, again, technology has not yet advanced far enough to make that a very useful security feature.

 

Edited to add: Ironically, by the time checking embedded DNA encoded in an ink or package becomes a practical reality in most situations, the technology will also have advanced sufficiently that it will be much easier for forgers to replicate such DNA strands.

Edited December 19, 2011 by WanderingAuthor