The Invention of Fountain Pen

Invention of fountain pen

Invention: Poenaru Petrache

Invention Year: 1827

As it is said that necessity is the mother of the invention on one fine day, a Romanian guy named Poenaru Petrache was writing some notes but he was busy scribbling notes he needed an instrument that would save him time. A Fountain Pen is technically a nib pen which is a writing instrument equipped with a metal nib (usually solid gold) that utilizes a cartridge, converter, or other internal reservoirs to provide a continuous and refillable ink supply

First Fountain Pen- M. Bion

A writing instrument carrying his own ink flow had existed in principle for over 70 years. After that Lewis Waterman put his thought into the concept of the Fountain Pen. 

Earlier the bird's feather was used as a writing instrument but it can't reserve ink itself. so that there is a need for an improved version of the writing instrument was felt. Inventors of an earlier age tried to make use of hollow channels of a bird's feathers as a natural ink reservoir and stick the nib at the end of the feather or quill. But it wasn't working efficiently for smooth and long writing.

As earlier as the beginning of the eighteenth century, the chief instrument-maker to the king of France, M. Bion, crafted fountain pens with nibs, five of which survive to this day. The first steel pen point was manufactured in 1828, thought to be invented by Poenaru Petrache, and in the 1830s the inventor James Perry had several unsuccessful attempts at designing nibs that employed the principle of capillary action. But it was Lewis Waterman who overcome every obstacle and crafted a successful pen. 

"None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain pen,

 or half its cussedness"

Modern Fountain Pen- Lewis Waterman 

The invention of the modern fountain pen is really more a story of perfection rather than invention in1883, more than 50 years after the fountain pen was invented, a New York insurance broker, Lewis waterman, was set to sign an important contract and decided to honor the occasion by using the standard ink-filled pen of the day. However, Fountain Pens were ink-filled pens of the day. however, Fountain Pens were notoriously unreliable, especially in their capacity to regulate their ink flow, so when the pen spilled ink across the contract so that it could not be signed, Waterman decided to do something about it.

Within a year Lewis Waterman had assigned the world's first practical, usable, and virtually leakproof fountain pen. To regulate the flow of ink he successfully applied the principle of capillary action, with the inclusion of a tiny air hole in the nib of the pen along with grooves in the feeder mechanism to control the flow of ink from his new leakproof reservoir to the nib. Although Waterman deserves credit for the invention of the modern pen we know today, he nonetheless stood on the shoulders of many who had gone before.