Chess and fountain pens, long ago.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

Here is an ad from the June 1904, issue of American Chess Bulletin. This was Volume 1, # 1 and was also the tournament book of the Cambridge Springs 1904, tournament. The part of the ad that relates to fountain pens is highlighted.

 

 

I'm guessing that they were selling double-ended fountain pens for that black and red ink. I don't know how common it was to record the moves of a chess game with two differently colored inks. A chess score sheet has two columns, they do today and they did in 1904, and before then. You just write the move next to the move number and in the column for white or black.

 

IMO the best thing to write your move on the score sheet with is a pencil, that way ink doesn't dry out while you're thinking. A wood cased pencil is probably best since it is less tempting for people to steal. And today the computers record a lot of the big deal, in-person tournaments. And for these pandemic times entire tournaments are being done on-line and no human is bothered with writing down the moves. at all.

 

I thought it might be interesting to see a fountain pen mentioned in the bulletin of a 117 year old chess tournament.

I know that for chess diagrams, which were used for chess problems and in correspondence chess a lot, people used red and black ink for the stamps that they used on the chess board diagrams. This was the first I've heard of players being expected to use multicolored fountain pens during a game.

[Paganini]

The different colored ink is for filling out position diagrams (N for knight!), like you mentioned. Some recording pads still have a board graphic included. I think it's mostly used at adjournment points to record the current position for the following day's play. I've never actually used one, but my pads do have them. (Then again, I don't play in tournaments, so....  )

[Ink Stained Wretch]

15 minutes ago, Paganini said:

The different colored ink is for filling out position diagrams (N for knight!), like you mentioned. Some recording pads still have a board graphic included. I think it's mostly used at adjournment points to record the current position for the following day's play. I've never actually used one, but my pads do have them. (Then again, I don't play in tournaments, so....  )

 

Hmmm, rather a lot to go through in order to record the adjourned position. I've always thought that those score sheets with the diagram printed on them were just wasting space that could be used for more moves, or larger type. The position should be obvious from the scoresheet that's sealed, and if you need to record the position per se then Forsyth notation is a lot faster than using two pens to fill in squares with multicolored ink.

 

Anyway, the things were on sale in 1904.

[bogiesan]

I liked the typo for "RUBBER SRAMPS".

 

Recording go on kifu sheets was once a general practice but is mostly done on a phone these days. I learned to record my games with two pencil-end erasers and a stamp pad; one eraser was carefully carved to imprint an empty circle for white, the other solid circle for black. Move numbers were written inside each stamped circle. 

 

Simple red/black numbers on board diagram: 

https://senseis.xmp.net/?Kifu

 

INtro to go: 

http://gambiter.com/go/

 

[fkyu]

Talk about a rarefied compound; Chess AND Fountain Pens.

Your post made me dig this out.

It was quicker to simply to draw the pieces

 

[Ink Stained Wretch]

On 4/19/2021 at 12:43 PM, evan-houseman said:

Talk about a rarefied compound; Chess AND Fountain Pens.

Your post made me dig this out.

It was quicker to simply to draw the pieces

 

 

It's rarefied? I hadn't realized that.

 

I remember those big, full board diagram stamps. I almost went for one once. They do take some fiddling with to get all of the aquares on the paper.

 

Now we can generate a full color diagram with a couple of clicks.