philadelphia – The fountain pen as a sensible writing instrument has been declared out of date quite a few instances. It was supposedly doomed by the improvements of the drip-free ballpoint pen and the typewriter, then the pc keyboard and now the power to robotically render voices into textual content on cellphones.
But the Nineteenth-century invention has defied whole extinction and is even evolving.
In a warehouse in a gritty Philadelphia neighborhood, mechanical engineer Ian Schon is doing one thing nobody else in America does: manufacturing writing implements with nibs – the enterprise finish of the fountain pen – handcrafted from titanium.
“The way we’re doing it is really what makes us separate from the other brands and other companies that have done this in the past, which is utilizing equipment in this workshop that’s traditionally designed for aerospace or medical manufacturing and repurposing it to create an innovative, unique experience that is just different,” Schon stated.
Not solely totally different within the twenty first century, it’s counterintuitive – with a dangerous funding in costly tools to make a dear product for a distinct segment market.
“A fountain pen is impractical. It can be messy. It’s not as good as a ballpoint pen. It’s expensive. So, it’s really in line with the culture of the pen user that it’s irrational and strange,” Schon stated.
“The next wave of fountain pen collectors and users will be rebelling against technology,” he predicted. “They’ll hate how much time their parents spent on Facebook when they should have been out hiking in the woods. They’ll want to throw their cellphones into the sea.”
Schon, who additionally efficiently tried his hand at watchmaking, is not any Luddite. His firm is a product of the digital age. The one-man startup was initially funded by way of Kickstarter in 2011, and the founder produces his personal YouTube movies to clarify his manufacturing course of and promote the pens, which vary in value between $125 and $400. He additionally manufactures just a few fashions of ballpoint and rollerball pens for many who decline to dive into the retro period of refillable ink.
The steel nib makes the fountain pen distinct from all different writing devices. It was an innovation for its time, permitting steady writing with out having to repeatedly dip the pen into ink. Early prototypes had been round greater than a thousand years in the past; Leonardo da Vinci could have used a fountain pen he developed.
Investment analyst Tony Blair reveals off his assortment at Philadelphia’s 130-year-old Pen & Pencil Club, fashioned by the town’s journalists, who wielded fountain pens to conduct their interviews.
For Blair, the antiquated writing instrument endures as an antidote to the digital age.
“Any time you introduce input/output like you do with a computer, now there’s also these other distractions. You’ll get a pop-up, and I’ll lose my thread. Or if I type up something, am I going to remember it the same way? I think writing by hand helps you remember it,” stated Blair, pulling out a fountain pen from a zip-up touring case holding almost two dozen of his favourite fashions.
Blair stated his first fountain pen was a secondhand Pilot Metropolitan with a medium nib he bought for $10.
Fountain pens are supposed to final a very long time, one more reason some want them over disposable ballpoints. Fountain pens may be custom-made with totally different colours of ink and kinds of nibs. But there are inconveniences.
“You have to refill it with ink. You are much more likely to spill ink on yourself or something else than you are with a standard disposable ballpoint,” Blair warned.
By the late Nineteenth century, the Waterman and Parker manufacturers had been mass marketed in America. Fountain pens turned extra commonplace than dip pens across the time of the World War I, though early Twentieth-century schoolchildren had been nonetheless studying find out how to write with the older implements. That explains why you should still come throughout an old-fashioned desk with a gap in it – for the inkwell.
By the Sixties, the ballpoint pen had turn out to be trendy. Subsequent generations who didn’t get instruction in cursive script are more likely to discover the fountain pen as mysterious because the rotary dial cellphone or the movie digital camera.
Liz Sieber is accustomed to encountering such curious novices. She is the proprietor of Philadelphia’s Omoi Zakka, a Japanese-themed stationery store promoting fountain pens, writing paper and ink.
“Some people really understand what the different nibs are about and the difference between a machine-aligned or a hand-aligned nib,” stated Sieber, standing in entrance of a tray containing fountains pens and ink bottles on the market. “And then we also meet a lot of people who have never tried one before and are looking for something that’s not too expensive, easy to use, plays nice with a lot of different types of paper.”
Most fashionable nibs are manufactured from metal, gold or iridium, and the fountain pen our bodies are manufactured from ebonite, stainless-steel or sterling silver. A real fountain pen additionally has a self-contained reservoir for ink, loaded manually or with a cartridge insert.
Sieber is a fan of a Sailor model pen from Japan that has a 14-karat gold nib.
“The art of that nib is that it’s gold, which is a very soft metal. So, as I hold it, it will become shaped uniquely to the way that I hold the pen,” she stated.
More shops in Japan than within the United States carry Schon’s made-in-Philadelphia pens, thus making a tiny entry on the export facet of America’s commerce deficit ledger.
“I love that challenge. I love being the underdog,” stated Schon.
That problem can also be writing a brand new web page within the story of American entrepreneurship.
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Steve Herman
Steve Herman, previously White House Bureau Chief, is now VOA’s Chief National Correspondent.