Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A fountain pen is a writing instrument that uses a metal nib to apply water-based ink, or special pigment ink—suitable for fountain pens—to paper.It is distinguished from earlier dip pens by using an internal reservoir to hold ink, eliminating the need to repeatedly dip the pen in an inkwell during use.
A dip pen has a steel nib (the pen proper) and a pen-holder. Dip pens are very versatile, as the pen-holder can accommodate a wide variety of nibs that are specialized for different purposes: copperplate writing, mapping pens, and five-pointed nibs for drawing music staves. They can be used with most types of ink, some of which are incompatible ...
Voltaire wrote: "I am very sad at the death of Madame de Pompadour. I was indebted to her and I mourn her out of gratitude. It seems absurd that while an ancient pen-pusher, hardly able to walk, should still be alive, a beautiful woman, in the midst of a splendid career, should die at the age of forty-two."
Inkstands with tightly closing lids, often finely made, were part and parcel of a traveling kit, until the widespread use of the fountain pen. Inkstands were going out of use before the development of ballpoint pen, which finished them as a primary source of ink. [4] An older name for an inkstand was a standish. [5]
The devices, which began to appear in the mid-19th century and peaked in popularity in the 1890s, cannot be conclusively attributed to a single person, although Hugh Blackburn, a professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow, is commonly believed to be the official inventor. [1]
A quill has the advantage of being more durable and more flexible than a reed pen, and it can also retain ink in the hollow shaft of the feather, known as the calamus, allowing more writing time between ink dippings. The quill was in common use until the early 19th century and the advent of the metal nib.
The Birmingham pen trade evolved in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter and its surrounding area in the 19th century. "Pen" is the old term for what is now generally referred to as a nib, and for over a century the city was the world's leading manufacturer of steel nibs for dip pens , also making nibs in brass, bronze, and other alloys.
Although quill pens had largely replaced reed pens by medieval times, from time to time the powerful strokes produced by the reed pen have been preferred by modern artists. [6] Until the end of the 19th century, most art was commissioned by wealthy patrons or by institutions such as the church.