Ink

A comment in the novel I am currently reading made me start thinking about ink and pens.

When I was young, ink came in a bottle. A squat little bottle about as wide as it was tall. Inside was an extra wall of glass near the top that made a pocket along one side of the bottle. With the lid tightly closed, you tipped the bottle to move ink into that pocket, called a well. The ink in that well was what you used for writing.

The oldest pen I remember was made of wood. It was a long but slender cone shape with curves that made it easy to hold. In the wide end of that handle was a slot into which you pushed a nib. The nib was a small curved piece of metal that had a slot in the pointed end. Dipping that slot into the well of the ink bottle would draw ink up into it. That ink was what you used to write.

But you had to use the right amount of pressure. Not enough pressure would mean the ink didn’t release. Too much pressure would release too much ink and you would have a blot. It took practice to learn how much pressure to use.

This also meant your paper would be wet with the ink. To dry it, you placed a piece of paper known as blotting paper over the ink to remove the excess. Then you had to very carefully lift it. If you let the blotting paper slide against the writing paper the ink would smear.

In those days there was not really a thing as jotting off a quick note. Writing took concentration as to the process as well as to the words to be written.

The next style pen I remember is the fountain pen. The nib was permanently installed in that pen and it was attached to a bladder inside the handle. There was a small lever on one side of the handle. When you put the nib into the ink well, you would gently lift and release that lever which would then draw ink up into the bladder. The advantage of this pen was that it held more ink than just a nib so you could write more without having to get more ink all the time.

Then came the retractable ball point pen. It’s handle was in two parts but there was no nib. Instead inside the pen was a very thin tube that was pre-loaded with ink. At the top of the pen was a button you pushed to make the tube extend or retract by use of a spring inside the pen. This meant you could safely carry a pen in your pocket or purse without getting ink everywhere. At the nib end was a tiny ball that rotated when you moved it across paper releasing just enough ink to let you write. The tube being pre-loaded meant you no longer needed a bottle of ink. Instead, when the ball point pen ran out of ink you unscrewed the two halves of the handle, removed the ink tube, and inserted a new tube. No fuss, no muss. And no blots.

Then stick pens came along, These held the same type of ink tube but the handle did not come apart. When you ran out of ink, you threw away the pen and got a new one. These were part of the “everything is disposable” era and they are still around today as are some retractable pens.

But now we do most of our writing on a computer using no ink at all. When we do want to use ink it is held in a printer that is totally separate from the writing instrument.

Does that mean we are back where we started?

TTYL,

Linda