1. Metal pen
The history of the metal pen cannot be considered definitively clarified. English and German literature in different ways, each in its own favor, they give a version of its origin. It can be assumed that both have their own reason: in the history of mankind, the most important discoveries and inventions often arise in different countries simultaneously or almost simultaneously, when they turn out to be historically prepared by the entire development of culture. Technology in this sense accurately reflects the urgent requirements of the era.
The invention of the metal pen should rightfully be considered one of the achievements of human genius. An improvement, imperceptible at first glance - the transition from a natural goose feather to an artificial metal one - played a huge role in the history of world writing, determining significant convenience and accelerating the process of recording thoughts.
Already Ancient Rome knew feathers made of bronze, copper and silver. Their cut and split were not too far from modern ones. The peculiarity of these feathers, in particular, was that they did not write off or corrode and were thus infinitely durable (“eternal”). Theodoric the Great (6th century AD) signed orders with this type of pen.
According to the German version (set out in the aforementioned book by Oyle), German masters of the 15th century. they knew silver and copper feathers, but they had to be systematically sharpened, and they were not flexible and elastic enough. Therefore, they did not come into general use at this stage.
In 1798, Alois Senefelder invented a metal pen that could be used to write on lithographic stone. It appeared important step in the further adaptation of the pen to paper. According to Oyle, the English manufacturers Maison, Peri and Weise learned about Senefelder’s invention, and in the 30s of the 19th century. used this invention.
In 1818, Jansen, a resident of Aachen, made a steel pen. He handed over this novelty to the person sitting in his office at the time. hometown to Congress with the wish that peace be as lasting as the material of his pen.
In 1828, Manteuffel, a mechanic who made surgical instruments from Berlin, made a steel pen. K. Burger adapted it to a goose feather, which began to serve as a pen. However, this invention was not successful among contemporaries.
Further progress of the steel pen was directly related to the development of steel production - it was necessary to learn how to make an elastic, but fairly hard, slowly corroding tape. 1852 or, according to other sources, 1856 should be considered the year of the creation of mass industrial products: Germany produced up to 700 large gross pens and 300 pens daily.
English literature claims that the metal pen was invented in 1780 by Samuel Harrison from
Birmingham: already in 1803, these feathers were sold in London for 5 shillings apiece (that is, approximately 2 rubles 30 kopecks at the then exchange rate). However, these feathers were not yet similar to modern ones: they had the shape of a tube or cylinder with converging edges, forming a slit in the middle. Sides were trimmed in the same way as a goose feather. The structural imperfections of this pen (especially its rigidity and hardness) also determined the low demand for it. Only after Harrison and Mason in 1828-1829. achieved greater elasticity of the pen, it quickly became widely known. In front of us is an already split strip of metal with wide side protrusions and holes in the center.
The metal pen allowed for much greater writing fluency. This determined the appearance in Russia in the 30s of the 19th century. foreign-made metal feathers; domestic ones arose later. In 1832, Vadim Passek sent T.P. Kuchina was given a steel feather as a gift - it was something new and unusual.
The technique of writing with metal (steel) pens has been popular among the masses since the early 50s of the 19th century. was not mastered immediately: let us remember the prisoner from “Notes House of the Dead", who "before I knew how, but as soon as they began to write with pens, I forgot how to do it" (Part II, Chapter 3).
It is easy to distinguish (in 1887) a letter written with a quill pen from one written with a metal one. This does not require the talent of Sherlock Holmes at all, as is described in Conan Doyle’s story “The Noble Bachelor.” In text written with a metal pen, even at low magnification, the grooves (indentations) around most of the letters are easily visible.
Doomed to death, the old writing instrument stubbornly fought for its existence. Back in 1856, the press diligently advertised “Zelinsky feathers” impregnated (to give hardness and elasticity) with a special composition (named after the calligraphy teacher Zelya), which were supposedly “superior to all kinds of iron feathers.”
Metal handles came into use a little later. At first, the pen was inserted into a homemade pen or quill pen, as student Chernyshevsky did, for example, in 1850. Mass-produced pens quickly won over with their convenience and low cost (an average of 3 kopecks per piece).
Metal feathers, despite the fact that for several decades they were mostly imported (most often from the German company "Soennecken" and the French "Blanzy Pour et C°"), were inexpensive: a large gross cost from 50 kopecks. up to 1 rub. 50 kopecks At first, the pen did not last long - the rusty one was unsuitable for writing. Anti-corrosion nibs (including gold ones with iridium or ruthenium at the end) came into practice only in automatic (“eternal”) pens.
The transition from goose feathers to metal (steel) was very long and gradual.
Lermontov's grandmother, E.A. Arsenyeva, on October 18, 1835, asked the poet: “Don’t forget, my friend, to buy me metal feathers; here in Tarkhany, no one knows how to sharpen a feather.”
T.N. Granovsky usually wrote with a quill pen and, as big news, in a letter to Belinsky dated October 20, 1838, he reported that he was sitting with Stankevich and writing with his “iron” pen.
Metal and goose feathers have coexisted for a long time. T.G. Tsyavlovskaya established that in the 30s, Pushkin began to write with a metal pen, but then again turned to a goose pen. In April 1849, Chernyshevsky did not have a metal pen and he wrote with a “simple” pen, i.e. goose May 8, 1852 Nikolai Bestuzhev
in a letter from Selenginsk he reported that he had never written with an iron pen and did not know how to write with it.
As something completely special and exceptional, A. Chuzhbinsky noted the clerk of the postal station in Melitopol, who in 1860 wrote with a steel pen. In educational use and in military institutions, cheap goose feathers survived even longer.
In Chernyshevsky's story "Alferyev" (1863), its hero, leaving "for a very, very long journey" (i.e. to hard labor), takes with him steel feathers and a special red coral handle for them (Chapter 1, § 3).
In the book of the teacher M. Barantsevich “The Method of Cursive Writing” we read: “Many find it difficult to sharpen a good pen and, not knowing how to achieve this, use steel pens or (goose) pens repaired by a typewriter; in order to avoid these inconveniences, I considered it necessary to give a little instruction regarding this subject." In general, in copybooks and handwriting manuals, the quill pen has been recommended for a very long time as the only writing instrument. “Textbook of Russian Calligraphy” by A. A. (St. Petersburg, 1844), “Cursive Writing Course...” by V. Khodorovsky (St. Petersburg, 1846) and much later: “Calligraphy Lessons” by A. Dyakov (M., 1863) , "Guide to a complete course of calligraphy..." by I. Laguzen (2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1866), "Guide to Calligraphy" by A. Verret (M., 1865), "Copybooks compiled for rural schools... "(2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1846), "Copybooks compiled for regimental schools..." (St. Petersburg, 1879) - all of them are focused only on the use of a quill pen, and the metal pen is condemned (especially by I. Laguzen ).
I. Laguzen devoted an entire section to the issue of using steel feathers.
They, according to him, have been used for 30 years. Currently, they “can replace goose feathers that are not very well trimmed.” Such limited convenience, of course, could not
remove goose feathers from use. According to Laguzen, the best artificial feathers are inferior to goose feathers, since they do not have the necessary elasticity, they have a detrimental effect on children’s handwriting, and their use is only permissible for those whose handwriting has already been completely established, “for ten pages written on smooth paper and a poorly repaired quill pen does not harm the handwriting as much as ten lines hastily written with a steel pen on chipped paper" (pp. 19-21).
Only in the mid-80s did the metal pen take root in educational practice. In everyday life, especially in urban life, it had already acquired the right of citizenship by this time. Thus, in the book by S. Miropolsky “Teaching writing in primary public school"(St. Petersburg, 1871, pp. 13-14) we encounter a polemical and decisive defense of the steel pen. In the book by F.V. Grekov, "Guide to a complete systematic course in penmanship, cursive writing and writing with a blunt pen..." (M., 1882 ), as well as in the “Methodological Guide to Teaching Writing” by A.K. Gortov (Elabuga, 1884) we are talking only about the steel pen, and in the book of the famous teacher of his time V.S. Methodical manual to teaching writing" (26th ed. St. Petersburg, 1907, pp. 13-14), this seemingly long-over debate was revived again: "Very often, even now, despite the widespread distribution of steel pens, the question arises: what kind of pens? give preference: steel or goose? And there are supporters of the use of goose feathers, which, due to their softness, are said to be more convenient for writing than steel ones,” etc. Nevertheless, steel feathers eventually won a complete victory. For some technical needs, the goose feather was preserved in the 20th century. Provincial notary offices, bailiffs' offices, a number of other offices, and the military department used quill pens until approximately Russo-Japanese War, and in the deep provinces among the Old Believers, even in some circles of the intelligentsia (a kind of
antique stylization!) the quill pen was preserved later.
In 1912, in the British Museum, each reader had two quills - a steel and a quill, the second - "as a sign of respect for the spirit of the past." But some readers used it. In "The Forsyte Saga" by D. Galsworthy, at a board meeting, a quill feather lay next to each member. “Goose feathers!” thought Michael. “It’s probably just a symbol: after all, everyone has an eternal pen” (“White Monkey”, part 3, chapter 12).
Although the steel pen has long been widely used, the idiom “journalists sharpened their pens” remains in the language to this day.
The transition from goose quills to steel ones not only facilitated the writing process, but also contributed to a change in handwriting, making it more individualized. Various steel feathers (and modern technology knows more than 400 types) to a certain extent determine the nature of the handwriting of the same person. As a rule, a habit develops a certain type pen. Let us recall in this regard the letter from V.I. Lenina M.A. Ulyanova dated February 7 (20), 1901 from Munich: “... I would ask Manyasha to send me with her<Н.К. Крупской. - С.Р.>: a box of “my” feathers. Imagine: I couldn’t find it anywhere here.” In the pre-revolutionary years, the “86” pen was especially popular in Russia.
“My mother dropped me, people picked me up, cut off my head, took out my heart, gave me something to drink - and I began to speak...” What a riddle! You won't understand anything! How is it - they cut off his head, but he drinks and talks? Still, what is this? It turns out that we are talking about a goose feather. They picked it up, cut off the tip diagonally, cleaned the middle, dipped it in ink - and it began to write, that is, speak, tell stories.
Goose feathers, and sometimes crow, peacock, and swan feathers, have been used for writing since the 7th century. But the feathers of chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl, and pigeons were not suitable for this, so not a single chicken, turkey or pigeon could boast that they helped famous writers create books. Only geese! After all, Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol wrote their immortal works by dipping goose feathers into bronze sippy inkwells. The quality of what was written largely depended on how the pen was cut and sharpened. Our great poet Pushkin did not trust anyone with this important matter. Moreover, he, like some other lovers of a good pen, knew one secret. Goose feathers taken from the left wing write letters much better and more beautifully, because their curve is more comfortable for the hand.
A good feather was considered a valuable gift. Goethe, the famous German poet, sent Pushkin a beautifully sharpened pen in a rich case as a gift. It is still kept in the poet’s museum-apartment in St. Petersburg.
And writing with goose quills is not at all easy. In inept hands, every line drawn from right to left or from bottom to top, any oval, caused the pen to splash with small nasty splashes. With strong pressure, it “swinged” and was written off pretty quickly. And the creaking!.. This is how Gogol describes one St. Petersburg office: “The noise of feathers was more like how several carts with brushwood passed a quarter arshin with withered leaves...”. Very soothing music!
And yet, despite all its shortcomings, goose feathers have successfully served writing humanity for a whole millennium. For ten centuries, an elastic quill quill creaked on parchment. handwritten books. How many royal decrees were signed by him!
How many mysterious messages, how many formulas of inspired alchemists, how many recipes of pharmacists were written by him!
They say that the reign of goose feathers ended in this way. One man who had to write a lot had a servant. He looked with pity at his master, who kept changing feathers. And then the servant had an idea: what if we made exactly the same feather, but only from durable material? For example, made of steel? And the servant made such a feather. He tried very hard, but still the pen looked a little unsightly, and most importantly, the inventor did not think of making a longitudinal slit at the tip of the pen. The pen squirted a lot of ink and wrote without pressure. But soon they figured out how to make such a slot, and then the quill pen completely replaced the goose feather.
It seemed that nothing threatened the inkwells, and then few people imagined that they, too, would go into oblivion. The minds of the inventors worked hard on how to combine a feather, a pen and an inkwell into one whole. In the throes of creativity, which lasted about a hundred years, the so-called “stylographic” pen was finally born. It worked like this: ink was poured into a hollow pen. The handle ended in a thin metal tube into which a wire was inserted. As a result, a narrow channel was formed through which the ink leaked, rather than flowed (which was very important!).
Inventors are amazing people. Sometimes their thoughts fly so high that they reach right to the ceiling. They came up with such a structure: a tank with ink hung under the ceiling, which flowed down through rubber tubes to metal rods and taps. If you turn the tap and squeeze the rod with your fingers, the ink will not flow; if you release it, it will flow down. Such “eternal pens” were installed in offices, banks, and other public places. What about at home? Who would want to keep a barrel of ink under their ceiling? Then one quick-witted person came up with this: he cut the metal rod into several parts, sharpened each one and inserted it into a stick. This is how the “insert” appeared - a pen that is still remembered by those who studied at school in the sixties, and in the outback in the seventies. Stationery feathers placed on a dyed wooden stick, can still be found today, for example, at some post offices.
What kind of feathers were not invented in two last century! Pointed and with a curved nose - stationery. Posters for artists, cartographic ones for drawing up geographical maps, sheet music with double cleft - for note scribes. Feathers in shape Eiffel Tower, feathers with portraits of Napoleon and the English Queen. There were personalized feathers decorated with coats of arms. This, of course, is for noble people who had coats of arms.
However, it cannot be said that the quill pen was the most ancient writing device. IN Ancient Egypt For example, four and a half thousand years ago they used kalam - a pointed reed stick that was dipped in ink. Kalamas have not survived to this day, you won’t see them in a museum, but they have reached us detailed descriptions how they were made and how they were used.
The same Egyptians also had another invention; it was discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun. It was a lead tube with a pointed end. A reed filled with dark liquid was inserted inside the tube. The liquid gradually flowed down to the pointed end, and when the tube was passed along the papyrus, a clear black mark remained on it. This invention of the ancient Egyptians was simply forgotten, and for many centuries the quill pen remained the most perfect writing medium.
Sharpening the tip of a pen with a special knife is called repairing(or sideways, sideways) . The feather trimmer was called a penknife, but this name has now been extended to all pocket knives.
Before sharpening, the pen had to undergo preliminary preparatory operations:
- part of the beard was cut off from the pen to make it more convenient for the writer to grasp the rod;
- the feather was boiled in alkali to degrease. The cooking time was at least 10-15 minutes;
- the boiled and dried feather was fired and hardened in hot sand at a temperature of no more than 60-65 ° C, after which the tip of the feather was ready for sharpening.
When sharpening, the end of the feather was cut off obliquely from the outside, then halfway from the opposite side, so that a semicircular groove was obtained. The middle of the groove was cut with a sharp penknife to form a split. The splitting of the pen could be different - depending on the individual writing style of the writer and on the type of writing it was intended for.
The quill pen was written off quite quickly - I had to repair it again or turn it upside down. In 1809, a machine for trimming goose feathers was invented, but this invention did not take root in Russia.
When writing with a quill pen, blots that appeared in the text were corrected with a special scraper.
People who were good at writing with a quill pen were called scribes (scribes), were extremely valued and were never left without work (which is also explained by the large percentage of illiterate people).
Sharpening a pen was a very important operation, since the quality of handwriting largely depended on its correct execution. Many poets and writers trusted no one to trim their feathers. It was even customary to give good feathers as gifts. In Pushkin’s office, Goethe’s own pen, sent by him as a gift to the great Russian poet, was kept in a rich case.
For drawing
For drawing, correct sharpening and chipping were especially important. For this there were special split knives specially adapted for this purpose. The pen prepared for drawing must have a particularly fine split to ensure the possibility of drawing fine lines. The choice of a quill pen for the drawing was due to the fact that a sequence of strong and weak pressures made it possible to draw lines of varying thickness. The quality of a quill pen drawing can be assessed by looking at antique book
I remember when I was at school, in our classroom there hung a portrait of Pushkin with a quill pen in his hand. Looking at this quill pen, I then sympathized with Alexander Sergeevich: how difficult it was for him to write with such a pen.
Out of curiosity, I then decided to make a quill pen myself and test it in action. I carefully cut the end of the feather at an angle, made a cut in the middle like in metal feathers, dipped it in ink, and then clean slate Instead of letters, only fat blots appeared - the pen categorically refused to write. And if, with excessive diligence and accuracy, I still managed to avoid blots, then still one dip of the pen in ink was not enough even for one letter. How many times, I thought, did Pushkin have to dip his pen in ink to write, for example, the fairy tale “Ruslan and Lyudmila”?
Today there are a lot of different pens - ballpoint, fountain, and helium - but in Pushkin’s time there weren’t even pens with which I wrote in primary school, dipping an iron pen placed on a wooden stick into a sippy inkwell. I remember I wrote with an “Asterisk” pen. There were also feathers “Frog”, “Number 11” and others.
As an adult, I learned that goose feathers were not so bad, and they wrote no worse than our “frogs” and “stars.” And all because feathers in Pushkin’s time were made differently than I thought. They took feathers from living geese, and took them only from the left wing (for left-handed people they took them from the right wing) and only in the spring. The feathers were then stuck into hot sand or ash to soften them and remove fat. Then the hollow tube was cut and exactly the same one was inserted, but with a smaller volume. It turned out like a capsule inside the pen where the ink accumulated. The tip of the pen was cut with a special penknife (the name “penknife” has survived to this day). When Pushkin picked up such a pen, he immediately
“And the thoughts in my head are agitated in courage,
And light rhymes run towards them,
And the fingers ask for the pen, the pen for the paper,
A minute - and the poems will flow freely.”
To write such a poem, Pushkin only had to dip his pen in ink no more than three times. One dip of the pen was enough to write an entire sentence.
Few people know that Russia was one of largest producers feathers all over the world. Russia exported 27 million goose feathers a year to England alone. In Russian cities, feathers went on sale in bundles, covered with twine, 25 pieces per bundle.
There was only one drawback of such feathers - they often had to be sharpened, since the tip of the pen quickly ground down from friction into the paper, producing a characteristic creak. This is how Gogol wrote about this creak in “ Dead souls": "The noise from the feathers was great and sounded as if several carts with brushwood were passing through a forest littered with a quarter of an arshin of withered leaves."
However, from under such a creaky pen came the brilliant works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, Pushkin, Lermontov... After the production of metal feathers began in Germany in the mid-19th century, not only goose feathers disappeared, but there were also no poets , equal to Shakespeare, Pushkin and the other geniuses listed above. Maybe some kind of motivating and inspiring force for creativity is hidden in goose feathers?
By the way, goose feathers still serve people today - they make shuttlecocks for playing badminton from it. The shuttlecock consists of 16 goose feathers and a cork head covered with thin kid leather.
Wooden pens with a metal nib lasted for more than a century. I remember when I was in the first grade, at first we were not allowed to write even with such pens, but only with a pencil, until we “filled” our hands and learned to write letters correctly. What a joy it was when you were finally allowed to write with a real pen.
A special groove was provided for the handle on the desks. Today, unfortunately, such desks no longer exist. The desks then were a solid, powerful structure made entirely of wood. The double desk combined into one continuous whole seat with a back and a tabletop, inclined at an angle of approximately 25-30 degrees. For convenience, the tabletop was equipped with two folding valve covers. I remember that teachers often scolded us for rattling these lids and trained us to lower them smoothly and silently. During the lesson, we tried not to slam the lids, but after the bell the roar from the lids resembled artillery shelling.
Under the tabletop there was a shelf for briefcases. The front edge of the tabletop was made in the form of a narrow horizontal bar, on which two recesses for sippy inkwells and two grooves for a pen or pencil were placed. In order for the desks to “grow” with the students, they were produced in four sizes.
Pens with a metal nib gradually began to be replaced by a ballpoint pen, which was invented in 1938 by the Hungarian journalist Ladislo Biro. His hands were far from perfect and there were many complaints about them. George Parker brought the ballpoint pen to life. Eisenhower used a Parker pen to sign the act of surrender of Nazi Germany.
In the USSR, the production of ballpoint pens was launched in 1949, and they became available to all citizens somewhere in the 60s. When the paste ran out, I remember the rods were not thrown away then, but were refilled several times at special gas stations.
I write and think: how old I am! I also brought desks, wooden pens with metal nibs, and sippy inkwells. If I had the ability to travel in time, I would return from this modern crazy world to the times of Pushkin, where lovers wrote notes and letters to each other with quill feathers.
How do you live alone in this world of yours?
Who danced with you at the autumn ball,
And then he received an arrow from Eros.
Maybe the young cornet couldn’t take his eyes off -
I ordered a phaeton to take you away,
Absorbed by your unearthly beauty,
The hero realized late: his plan was empty!
Or an ardent poet read stanzas to you,
And then the musician played a madrigal,
How he loves you selflessly alone
And I’m ready to give you the moon from the sky.
Maybe now you're walking through the garden
You remember me and still wait...
Colorful foliage rustles underfoot,
And dear words sound to me:
"Write me a letter
goose feather,
How do you live alone?
in this world of yours,
Why did you dance?
this waltz is not with me,
I'm sad alone
I've been waiting for you.
Why did you dance?
this waltz is not with me,
I'm sad alone
I've been waiting for you."
(AUTUMN WALTZ
Poems by Julia KHARIS)
Reviews
“Oh, how many wonderful discoveries the spirit of enlightenment is preparing for us!”
Until now, I assumed that a quill pen was simply cut and written :) But there are so many important details here! It's like trying to make a violin out of plywood - it may look the same, but you won't be able to extract sound.
Ancient books - prayer books, chronicles, sets of royal decrees - were created on papyrus, a convenient and relatively accessible material. Why "relatively"? Because in the 2nd century BC, after the construction Library of Alexandria, the Egyptians established a monopoly on the production of papyrus. They prohibited the export of reed outside the state and did not sell ready-made papyrus. Meanwhile, science and literature were developing, people needed durable and easy-to-use information carriers, which are a clay tablet, a wax tablet, and papyrus.
In addition to the fact that papyrus was too expensive for the ancient Greeks, it also had a lot of serious disadvantages. Over time, the papyrus darkened, dried out and collapsed. The technology for processing papyrus leaves into writing canvas did not change the fibrous structure of the material. The dried plant fibers were too brittle. Papyrus could be rolled into a scroll, but it could not be folded or crumpled. In addition, this material, unlike clay and wax, was disposable. The text written on papyrus could not be washed off or erased.
At the same time, clay was not suitable for creating handwritten books due to the small usable area and heavy weight signs. The writing on the wax rubbed off too easily, and the wax itself melted too easily. For ordinary applications, the wax tablet was perfectly suitable, but it was absolutely not suitable for publishing books.
After the Egyptians introduced a ban on the export of papyrus, Greek craftsmen turned their attention to the east. In Persia, diphther, the dried skins of sheep and goats, have been used for writing since ancient times. Residents became interested in ancient technology Greek colony in Asia Minor - the state of Pergamum with the capital of the same name. In the 2nd century BC, Pergamon began producing its own writing material. The technology for dressing skins was improved (the skins were not only dried, but also polished), and the skins of cattle and pigs began to be used to make diphther. The result was new material, which was named after the country of its invention - parchment. IN Ancient Rome parchment was initially called membrane, but later, from about the 4th century AD, the Greek version of the name returned to parchment.
Parchment had before papyrus a whole series advantages and only one disadvantage. The advantages were the extremely strength and durability of the material. The ink writing on the parchment could be washed off and the cloth could be reused. The service life of parchment was determined by the mechanical strength of the tanned leather and was, in fact, unlimited. A book written on parchment could be rolled into a scroll, folded in half or in four. The parchment did not darken, did not dry out, did not crack or break. Panels of parchment could be sewn together, resulting in sheets that were very large size. It was possible to bind sheets of parchment and bind them into codices - into notebooks of 4 sheets and, accordingly, 16 pages (by the way, the first Roman codices, which appeared at the end of the 1st century AD, were wax tablets sewn into a book). The codices had a wooden cover, trimmed with leather and decorated with metal overlays. The bindings of the codices had a clasp.
The disadvantage of parchment was the labor-intensive production, which led to its prohibitive cost. That is why papyrus successfully competed with parchment until the advent of paper. Thanks to the invention of parchment, the most ancient documents and books have reached us. Texts on papyrus disappeared over time along with the material on which they were written, but time did not cause irreparable damage to parchment books.
It should be noted that religious literature was published in the form of parchment codices even after the invention and spread of paper. At the same time, the text and illustrations of books were written in colored ink, gold and silver. Papyrus fell out of use by the beginning of the Middle Ages.
The invention of new materials for writing - parchment, and then paper - also required new writing instruments. Around the 600s AD in Europe (presumably in Spain), man first tried to write with a quill pen. It immediately became clear that quill pen and ink were excellent for writing on parchment. Moreover, if the tip of the pen is sharpened in a special way, you can write with tilt and pressure, thickening the stroke or making it thinner. That is, the quill pen made it possible to diversify writing, give it grace and greater functionality. The latter is very important, since with the use of a quill pen in alphabets European languages capital letters appeared. Previously, only capital letters were used in writing.
And yet - why a goose feather, and not, say, a chicken or pigeon feather? The reason lies in the very structure of the goose feather. It has a thick, hollow shaft with a voluminous porous base, making the feather more comfortable to hold in the hand than the feather of any other bird. When the tip of the pen is cut at an angle, the porous inside of the tip is exposed, which absorbs ink well. The moderately soft pen shaft retains its shape, but at the same time glides across the parchment (and, of course, paper) without much friction. In addition, the goose was one of the most common domestic birds in Europe at that time, so feathers were widely available.
The invention of a new writing instrument entailed a change in the technology of making parchment, it began to be made smoother and thinner, and the appearance of previously unseen devices - an inkwell, a sandbox, a knife for sharpening feathers.
The knife is worth talking about separately. For two hundred years, humanity has not used a quill pen. But the knife for sharpening it is alive and well. And its name remains the same - penochinny. A small sharp blade that folds inside the body; a pocket knife was not always like this. Medieval penknives copied large blades. They were often decorated precious stones and inlay. And this is not surprising, since they belonged to people not only enlightened people, who needed writing instruments in everyday life, but also the rich, to whom education was available based on origin and income.
Over time, the pocket knife became a universal tool. First, folding knives appeared - they were safe to handle and fit in a pocket. Secondly, with a penknife you can not only sharpen (sharpen - hence the name) goose feathers, but also sharpen wooden pencils, cut paper and perform a lot of other necessary tasks (for example, opening a bottle of ink or cutting sealing wax from a mailing envelope). Thirdly, a good knife also serves as decoration, a beautiful trinket that is pleasant to hold in your hands.
By the way, sharpening pencils with a penknife is inconvenient. It is difficult to maintain the sharpening angle and maintain accuracy at the same time. And a penknife does not have enough blade length to cut papers. And yet, pocket knives remain with us.
There is nothing tricky about an inkwell - a jar with an aqueous solution of a coloring pigment. True, by the time the steel pen was invented, the inkwell had changed. A “sippy bottle” appeared - an inkwell with a cone built into the neck of the jar. This cone prevented ink from spilling onto the table if the inkwell was accidentally tipped over. But this simple protection did not always work. If the sippy cup is slowly turned on its side, the ink will spill. If there is more than half the ink in the inkwell, it will also spill. Finally, a sippy cup will not save you from the main scourge of a goose feather - blots. Excess ink hangs in a drop on the tip of the pen, and if you move it carelessly, this drop falls onto the paper.
The sandbox helped combat blots. Dry grains of sand absorbed the ink and partially saved the damaged manuscript. In addition, the sand made the ink dry faster. The sandbox was a metal jar with dry sand, which was sprinkled with a finished sheet of paper. With the invention of absorbent blotting paper, sandboxes fell into disuse.
No one knows when a person first picked up a bird's feather, dipped its sharpened tip into a jar of soot ink and drew the first stroke on parchment. It is believed that the pen was invented around 600 AD somewhere in the Arab East. However, in Pompeii, archaeologists found bronze feathers that could have appeared as a result of the improvement of bird feathers. This means that they learned to use bird feathers for writing much earlier.
The problem is that bird feathers are organic. It is almost impossible to detect traces of it in archaeological excavations. There is speculation that bird feathers have been used in Seville since around 900 AD. But this is not so significant. Another thing is important - for a whole millennium, bird feathers have been the main instrument for writing.
We are talking specifically about goose feathers... Why? Geese were the most common poultry with robust plumage. It is impossible to use, say, a chicken pen for writing. It has a very thin shaft that is difficult to hold in your hands. A goose feather is thick, solid and durable.
For writing, only five outer flight feathers from each wing of the bird were used. It was believed that the right wing feathers were better suited for right-handed people, and the left wing - for those who write with their left hand.
Feathers were harvested only in the spring and from young, strong birds. Then the feathers were subjected to special processing. Part of the protruding beard was cut off from the shaft to make the pen more comfortable to hold in the hand. Then the feather was degreased by immersing it in a boiling alkali solution for a quarter of an hour. After drying, the feather was placed in sand heated to 65 degrees, in which it was hardened and became hard. The finished feather was sharpened with a penknife (hence the name of the tool; the feather was “sharpened” with a small knife). And please - you can dip the finished writing instrument into the inkwell and write."
The quill pen was extremely popular. Turkey and crow feathers competed with it. Russia was famous for harvesting feathers, where goose feathers became an export product from the mid-18th century. Russia supplied millions of feathers to England every year. At the same time, Russian feathers were considered to be of the highest quality due to the characteristics of our climate (the plumage of Russian domestic geese was the densest and most durable).
The spread of bird feathers around the world has influenced many important areas of human activity. Namely - for education, literature, printing, and the paper industry. The invention of machines for making paper is due more to the quill pen than to the printing press.
However, by the middle of the 18th century, people began to get tired of the imperfections of the main writing instrument. What were these imperfections?
Quill pens don't last long. Its tip has to be constantly sharpened, and this is a whole art: it is very easy to ruin the pen if you sharpen it incorrectly.
Hence, another significant drawback is the instability of the stroke. The quill pen was poorly suited for calligraphy, which is noticeable in the manuscripts of the great poets and prose writers of that time. As the pen wore out, the stroke thickened and lost its shape.
Next. A good pen is not that cheap. Therefore, feathers were purchased only from trusted suppliers, for a lot of money and in whole packages. They were given and received as gifts. The most famous case was a gift to Pushkin from Goethe - the same pen with which Faust was written. Pushkin kept this feather as a relic.
Attempts to improve the goose feather were made back in the Middle Ages. Venetian craftsmen invented glass-tipped quills. The ink was fed to the tip along a spiral outer groove, and was retained by it. This pen was not widely used due to its high cost and abundance of blots.
In 1748, Johannes Janssen invented the steel pen. Its design was a narrow metal plate curved in a semicircle with notches on inside bend, but without a slot. This pen was not very practical. The ink quickly ran out, and a new portion, after dipping into the inkwell, tended to immediately roll off onto the paper. It was almost impossible to work with such a pen.
It took almost a hundred years to perfect the design of such a simple thing as a steel pen. The first classically shaped pen, with a slot in the middle and a curved tip (later a hard metal ball appeared), was produced by the German company Heinze and Blankertz in 1848. Since then, the age of the goose feather has rapidly rolled into decline. Towards the end XIX century Only refined aesthetes used goose feathers.
It's interesting that in the same XVIII century Attempts were made to create a prototype of a fountain pen. These were compound pens based on goose feathers - combined devices of two or three connected parts. The middle part is a gold or silver (sometimes made of bone or amber) richly decorated base-holder. A tip was attached to the base - the lower part of an ordinary goose feather. It could be changed as it wears out by sharpening the pen shaft so that it fits tightly into the hole in the base. For beauty, a fan was inserted into the back of the base - part of the feather of a peacock, ostrich or other bird with beautiful plumage. Composite pens were very popular among the European aristocracy. An expensive and desired gift, with which the giver emphasized his respect for the enlightenment of the one to whom the gift was intended.
The idea of a compound pen was not lost in vain. Together with the steel nib of the classical design, a holder for it was invented - a traditional fountain pen. The pen was inserted into the ring clamp of the pen. Sometimes, in particularly expensive, one-piece writing instruments, the pen was connected to the body of the pen with a threaded coupling. Then feathers made of gold appeared. Since then, steel and gold have been the main materials for the production of feathers.
Non-automatic fountain pens have not left the scene even today. True, they are used either as expensive souvenirs or for working with special poster pens. Traditional fountain pens are revered by experts in the field of calligraphy: fountain pens are not suitable for this, since greasy ink instantly clogs the capillary.
An attempt to create an automatic pen that did not need to be dipped into an inkwell was made in 1827, even before the start of full-scale production of steel nibs. The inventor of the fountain pen, Petrache Poenaru, thought through everything down to the smallest detail. He connected the steel pen to the ink reservoir. But here’s the problem: the ink flowed down the pen onto the paper. There was simply nothing to regulate the feed.
In 1884, New York stationery dealer Lewis Waterman proposed his own design of a fountain pen - with capillary ink supply to the nib. This is where it all started. fountain pen gradually acquired modern shape.
Why today, in the age of ballpoint, gel and other convenient fountain pens, do we constantly return to pen and ink? The answer is very simple. Writing with a ballpoint pen is work. Writing with a pen is a pleasure.