22, The Eyedropper Era

[rhr]

Well, it's time once again. If no one has any complaints, I will resume my series of favorite pen patents, the second series, which really should have been the first. The first series should have been the second, and the second first, because these favorites are taken from the first US patents, the ones from the early period.

 

 

The Eyedropper Era.

 

Someone used the term "the eyedropper era" awhile back, and it got me thinking. What exactly constitutes the eyedropper pen era? And more to the point, when exactly did the eyedropper pen era start? In order to have an eyedropper era, you must first have an eyedropper. And not all pens capable of being filled with an eyedropper fall within this eyedropper era. For instance, all the Bion-type pens going back to 1650-1700 could now be filled with an eyedropper, but at the time they were made, they were filled either by pouring the ink in, or with glass tube pipettes.

 

What's needed for the eyedropper era to begin is, first of all, the invention of soft, pliable rubber, and then, secondly, the invention of squeeze-bulb technology. The former didn't come along until Nathaniel Hayward's 1839 US patent for soft rubber, assigned to Charles Goodyear, and Goodyear's own improved 1844 US patent for soft rubber, and Thomas Hancock's 1844 patent for the same in the UK. But that's not the beginning of the eyedropper pen era, yet. You still need the later squeeze-bulb technologies to be discovered and perfected and popularized before that potential is recognized and utilized and adapted for medicine droppers and eyedroppers.

 

According to Mike Woshner's book, India-Rubber And Gutta-Percha In The Civil War Era, the first squeeze-bulbs didn't make their appearances until the late 1840s and early-to-mid 1850s. They were used for such purposes as artificial nipples, breast pumps, saliva pumps, various dental and medical pumps and syringes, enema pumps and syringes, and air pumps. There is even an 1856 pneumatic fountain inkwell with a squeeze-bulb, patent no. 14,451.

 

In spite of all this, I couldn't find a patent for an eyedropper itself, but perhaps it was already common knowledge by the time the first eyedropper patents were applied for, and it was considered prior art, and unpatentable. Maybe it's just a matter of finding the right title, or name, or search term. So the eyedropper probably dates to some time in the late 1840s to mid 1850s. In any case, the first "medicine-dropper" patent that I could find wasn't until 1868, patent no. 79,487, and that one doesn't fit into the Civil War era, so it isn't even included in the Woshner book. But it would make a great traveling inkwell.

 

Even so, most of the pens of the period were still said to be filled "by pouring the ink in", 6,672, and 16,299, and 123,263, rather than being filled with an eyedropper. Has anyone else been able to find an earlier patent for an eyedropper, or medicine dropper?

 

Also see patent no. 296,963 for a pen that incorporates an eyedropper bulb into the pen, and patent no. 542,450 with one of the first patent illustrations of an eyedropper being used to fill a pen.

 

George Kovalenko.

 

Edited July 8, 2007 by rhr

[rhr]

Thanks to Olle Hjort at Lion & Pen for posting this patent over there, patent no. 5,789.

 

He's right. Fig. 9 in the illustration is probably the earliest representation of an eyedropper for a fountain pen. But the pen is a dual filler. It has a rubber sac and may also be filled as a finger-press filler.

 

George Kovalenko.

 

Edited June 20, 2007 by rhr