Fact about pen

Ten Fantastic Facts About Pens

At Ryman, we’ve been selling all kinds of stationery for one hundred and twenty years. When you’ve been around that long, you’re bound to pick up a few interesting facts along the way.

Recently, we shared with you ten facts about pencils, so today we thought we’d follow that up with a few interesting things that you might not know about pens:

1. They’re 5,000 Years Old

The ancient Egyptians used reed straws with a split nib to write on papyrus as long ago as 3,000BC. They would mix soot or red ochre with vegetable gum and beeswax to produce ink.

2. Where There’s A Quill There’s A Way

The reed pen was gradually replaced by the feather quill. The quill was more flexible than the reed pen and allowed more ornate lettering to be produced. Goose feathers were most commonly used, although other birds were also used.

3. The Industrial Revolution

Quill pens continued to be used right up until the early 19th century when they were finally replaced by the metal dip pen. In the 1850s, Birmingham became the global capital of pen nib manufacture, producing half of all the pens in the world.

4. Reel Around The Fountain Pen

People had been experimenting with fountain pens in one form or another since the 10th century, there had been little success. Lewis Edison Waterman is believed to have invented the first successful fountain pen while working as an insurance salesman. A faulty pen is said to have leaked onto a contract he was about to sign, and as he prepared a fresh copy, the client signed with somebody else.

5. Part James Dyson/Part Derren Brown

The ballpoint pen was invented in 1931 by László Bíró. The Hungarian born Bíró had already produced a number of other inventions, including the automatic gearbox, and studied hypnotism before working on the ballpoint.

6. It Takes Twenty-One Ballpoints To Run A Marathon

The average Bic Cristal ballpoint can produce a line of around 2km. That means that one single pen could draw a line over four times longer than the height of the Empire State Building.

7. Truly Mightier Than The Sword

Modern ballpoint pens feature metal balls as the writing point, often these are made from tungsten carbide. Three times tougher than steel and denser than titanium, tungsten carbide means that the pen truly is mightier than the sword.

8. They Learn

While ballpoints use tungsten carbide for their writing points, fountain pens usually use either steel or, on more expensive models, precious metals like gold. Gold-nibbed fountain pens slowly adjust to your writing style – as you use the pen, the gold nib will flex and soften, giving greater character to your handwriting and becoming truly unique.

9. Diamonds Are A Pen’s Best Friend

Although it might sound extravagant to buy a pen with a gold nib, it’s nothing compared to the Aurora Diamante. With a solid platinum barrel, and coated with two thousand gems (including 30 carats of diamonds), the pen is valued at around $1.28m. At a price like that, you’d make sure you never lost it.

10. One Pen You Couldn’t Lose

You wouldn’t need to worry about losing a pen if you were Acharya Makunuri Srinivasa. In 2011 in India, he created the world’s biggest ballpoint pen, measuring 5.5 m (18 ft 0.53 in) and weighing 37.23 kg (82.08 lb 1.24 oz).