Pen, an instrument for writing with a fluid ink. When the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and some other ancient nations wrote upon papyrus or parchment they used a reed pen (Lat. calamus), and when they used tablets of wood or stone covered with wax they wrote upon them with a pointed stylus of bronze, bone, or other material. Some of these ancient reed pens have been preserved. One, now at Naples, was found in a papyrus at Herculaneum. Reed pens are still the only kind used by the natives of Persia and some neighbouring countries. A metal pen does not suit their mode of writing. These reed pens are pointed much in the same way as quills, and are made from the reeds or stems of Phragmites communis, which is also a British plant, Erianthus Ravennae, and probably other species of this genus. The Chinese and Japanese write with a small brush or hair-pencil. Quills are known to have been used for writing with as early as the 7th century of our era, but long after that reed pens also were employed in European countries.
Metal pens were in use, but probably only to a very limited extent, among the ancient Romans. In the museum at Naples there is a bronze pen, nibbed like a modern steel pen, which was found at Pompeii. Another of a somewhat different shape was discovered at Herculaneum. Bronze and silver writing pens appear to have been occasionally made in the middle ages, but there is little doubt these were more curiosities than articles in general use, and the same may be said of all metallic pens of more recent date, sometimes referred to in books, until we come to the beginning of the 19th century. For centuries before that quills were universally employed among western nations, and in schools steel pens were only very partially substituted for them till about 1840.
Perhaps the earliest English metallic pens of which we have any certain knowledge were some made in 1780 by Mr Harrison, split-ring maker, Birmingham, for Dr Priestley. They were of sheet-steel, formed into a tube and filed into shape, the joining of the metal making the slit. Brass pens were also made in England before the end of last century; one of these seems to have been in the Strawberry Hill collection of art objects and curiosities (Walpole's), which was sold in London in 1842. In the early part of the century various plans were tried to produce pens more lasting than ordinary quills. The quills were pointed with metal, and pens constructed of horn and tortoise-shell had small pieces of diamond and other hard gems embedded in them by pressure. Another plan was to attach gold to their points. Such pens were of course too costly for general use. Barrel pens of steel made by Mr Wise were on sale in London in 1803, but these, too, were high in price, and did not take the market. The first English patent for the manufacture of steel pens is that of Bryan Donkin in 1803. A patent, the first of its kind in America, was granted in 1810 to Peregrine Williamson of Baltimore for the manufacture of metallic pens. Steel pens of the barrel type were being made in 1815 by Sheldon of Sedgley, the price being 18s. per dozen. By 1820 the number of manufacturers had increased. To Mr James Perry belongs the credit of bringing steel pens into general use. He began pen-making at Manchester in 1819, using the best Sheffield steel (from Swedish charcoal iron) for the purpose. Perry removed to Red Lion Square, London, and had developed the pen trade with remarkable energy before the prominent Birmingham makers, Mitchell, Gillott, and Mason, caused a revolution in the trade by machine-made pens. He took out a patent for a new method of making pens in 1830, from hard, thin, elastic metal, and a 'length of slitted or cleft space' scarcely exceeding that of quill-pens; and he made other improvements in 1832. The greatest improvement in the manufacture was the adoption of the screw handpress for the cutting out of pens, enabling the manufacturer to supply them cheaply and in quantities. At first the method of slitting pens by means of a press was kept a profound secret by Gillott and Mason. To Mr John Mitchell, Birmingham, has been assigned priority in this invention. Sir Josiah Mason made barrel pens in 1828, and 'slip' pens for Perry in 1829. At the end of 1875, when Sir Josiah Mason retired from his business, his output exceeded 32,000 gross weekly. To Mitchell, Gillott (whose patent is dated 1831), and Sir Josiah Mason chiefly belongs the credit of first making steel pens by machinery, thus enabling them to be sold cheaply and to become articles of common use.
An ordinary pen looks a simple enough instrument, but before it assumes its present appearance it has to go through some sixteen different processes. Birmingham is the great seat of the steel-pen trade. The steel of which the pens are made comes from Sheffield, and is in sheets 6 feet long and 1 foot 5 inches wide. It is first cut into strips of convenient width; next it is annealed, and rolled to the requisite thickness, when it is found to have trebled its original length and to have acquired a bright surface from the action of the rollers. The 'blanks' or first shape of the pen are now cut out by means of a press; next comes the operation of marking or stamping the name on the pen, then piercing; but before they can be formed into the shape of a pen they require to be softened by annealing. They are freed from dust and grease, placed in round pots, which are again enclosed in larger ones, are covered with charcoal dust, put into a muffle or iron box, heated to a dull red, and then allowed to cool. The pens are next raised or formed into the required shape by a blow from a screw-press fitted with a punch and a die. Then they are hardened. This is done by arranging them in thin layers in covered iron pans of a round shape, which are heated to a bright redness in a muffle. The contents of the pans are next emptied into a bucket, immersed in a tank of oil, and transferred to a perforated cylinder, which, being quickly rotated, drains off the oil. The pens are still greasy and as brittle as glass, and in order to cleanse them they are again placed in perforated buckets and plunged into a tank of boiling soda-water. They are next tempered, or softened, by enclosure in an iron cylinder which is kept revolving over a charcoal fire until the requisite degree of softness is attained. The pens have been blackened by this operation; they are next scoured by being dipped into a tub of diluted sulphuric acid, and then put into iron barrels containing water and material made from broken and finely-ground annealing pots. The barrels are kept revolving for five, or sometimes eight, hours; then the pens are subjected to a second process of scouring in barrels filled with dry material of the same kind; and then to a third process in which dry sawdust is the scouring or cleaning agent. The pens have now acquired a bright, silver tone, and the points have been rounded. They have then to be ground between the pierced portion and the point; this is done on a small revolving solid wheel or 'bob' made of wood, covered with leather, and coated with emery-powder. Next comes the operation of slitting, which is cleverly accomplished by a cutting-press, but, the edges of the slit being sharp, the pens are again polished in revolving barrels. They are now coloured and varnished; the colouring is done in a copper or iron cylinder over a coke fire; if to be lacquered they are placed in a solution of shellac. Afterwards the spirit is drained off, the pens are placed in wire cylinders, and kept revolving until the lacquer is dry. Next the pens are spread on iron trays and put into an oven, the heat of which spreads the lacquer evenly over the surface. Girls now look over the pens, throw aside the faulty ones, and the good ones are packed into boxes ready for sale.
How the trade has grown may be seen from the fact that in 1839 steel pens were almost unknown; in 1849 the trade was a leading industry in Birmingham; there were twelve factories employing about 2000 men, women, and girls, the weekly output of pens being stated at 65,000 gross. The output in 1866 had increased to 98,000 gross weekly; and about 4000 people were employed in all departments. In 1886 the weekly average of pens manufactured was about 160,000 gross, or twenty-two million pens. There were four penworks in the United States at the same date, only one of which was of importance; three in France; and one in Germany. The most successful recent patents in connection with pens have been those dealing with points which are turned up or turned down, thickened or 'planished,' for smooth writing. A leading pen-maker has a catalogue containing 5000 varieties of pens, while it has been estimated that no fewer than 100,000 different shapes and sizes are in the market. All the pen-makers now make pen-holders, and Josiah Mason has related that he made the first stick pen-holders for Perry in 1832, and for Gillott in 1835.
Pens are also made of silver, platinum, and aluminium bronze. They have also been made of vulcanite. The gold pen, which is incorrodible with ink, was also made in Birmingham for Mordan and others. Made in the United States as early as 1836, it has become a speciality there: one American firm manufactures 100,000 every year. The gold pen goes through no less than forty-five different processes, from the gold-bar, purchased from the United States Assay Office, which is alloyed, to the highly-finished article of commerce. To give firmness to the point of the pen it is pointed with iridium. The United States imports over half a million gross of steel pens annually, and manufactures one and a half million gross, at Camden, Meriden, and Philadelphia. The steel used is mostly imported from Birmingham. In the stylo-graph, or fountain pen, the nib is dispensed with, a finely-tapered point connecting with the barrel containing the ink; the first fountain pen was brought out in 1848. See Bunce's Josiah Mason (1890), which contains a sketch of the history of the steel-pen trade.