6/8/2022

Today, if someone needs to write something, it is quite easy to

do so. However, things were not always that way. Before, pens

were either leaky or you had to constantly dip them into the

inkwell to write. In 1883, an invention that had been patented

over two decades before in France was improved in a way that

would pave the way for the modern ballpoint pen. The fountain

pen was the first pen to hold it’s own ink and was revolutionary

to everybody, as people no longer had to carry inkwells around

if they wanted to write. Today, the fountain pen might seem

obscure and irrelevant, but it completely revolutionized how

people wrote.
Originally the reservoir had to be manually filled with an eye

dropper, but this was messy and required the inkwell. Later this

was replaced with a pump system, but this was still very messy.

Eventually the ink cartridge was implemented, which would

click into place and would be punctured by the feed, starting the

ink flow.

The fountain pen was a revolutionary invention that changed the

way the average American wrote. Once the pen nibs started

being made of stainless steel instead of gold, the pens became

cheaper and more accessible. This caused the fountain pen to

become the preferred writing tool of most Canadians and

Americans. Of course, bookkeepers, writers, and other people

whose jobs involved lot of writing were the most effective, but
once the fountain pen became available, most people replaced

their quills and leaky metal pens with fountain pens