The evolution of the pen....

19th Century Dip Pen

Here's a typical dip pen, probably from the last century. The tapered end looks to be mother of pearl, while the front end is gold filled. You simply take your favorite point and put it in the end, then slide back the bead to lock it in place. 

Waterman 14psf ca. 1918

The fountain pen industry was well off and running by the time World War I came around, and much advertising was directed toward parents, wives, etc. to buy pens for the Boys Over There. No doubt many pens like the one above could be found in shirt pockets all over central Europe in those years (one recently turned up in France, where it had been buried with its owner for some 80 years . . .it still wrote, of course), although some doughboys preferred Parkers because their washer clips permitted them to be pushed farther down out of sight in the pocket.

Conklin Ringtop

In 1897, Roy Conklin invented the crescent-filler pen (usually thought of as the first self-filling sac pen), and by 1902 he was firmly in the pen business. This particular example, a model 20p ringtop pen in chased black hard rubber, should date to around the late teens. It has an exceptionally flexible point. The picture above is rather misleading as to the size of the pen; it is actually quite small at just over 115 mm capped.

Lambrou notes that the Conklin crescent filler was actually technically superior to the Sheaffer lever filler because the crescent could deflate the sac much more thoroughly. However, there was no getting around the ungainliness of the crescent when you compared it to those spiffy Sheaffers and their legion of imitators. Conklin phased out its crescent filler early in the twenties and made room for fascinating products like the Nozac, but things went badly in the later 1930s when Conklin was sold to a Chicago partnership, and the firm soon disappeared beneath the waves during the Great Depression. 

Sheaffer Lifetime Ringtop c. 1927

 

Through the years around the first World War, the pen business grew by leaps and bounds. The typical pen of those years was made from hard rubber (also known as vulcanite or ebonite), which was one of the easiest materials to work with in those days before synthetic plastics. The pen parts were machined into shape from rods or tubes of hard rubber, and were decorated with machine engraving, or oftentimes clad in precious metals. Black was by far the most common color for these pens, but they could occasionally be found in red or other colors, or swirled, woodgrain, or mottled mixtures. Better pens used 14k solid gold points, while lesser ones made do with steel. Pocket clips appeared early in the century for men's pens; some were riveted in place (like the Waterman Clip-Cap), others were more ingeniously attached (like the spring loaded Sheaffer clip). Ladies made do with smaller pens, some having ring tops for attachment to chains (men could also attach them to their watch chains and wear them in vest pockets). Most of the major manufacturers offered matching mechanical pencils. 

Parker "61"

Fifteen years after reinventing the fountain pen with the model 51, Parker created this pen, the model 61, with what has to be the simplest filler yet...no squeezing, no screwing, no levers, no moving parts of any description -- just unscrew the barrel and drop the pen, point up, in an ink bottle for a few seconds, and a wick inside the pen draws in a load of ink.

As if that weren't cool enough, the 61 also cleans itself up after filling; the Teflon coating on the filler repels ink, requiring nary a wipe before reclosing.

This capillary filler was probably the last word in fountain pen technology; although Parker would go on to offer an adjustable point for the V.P. and 75 series pens, and would also create the daring T-1 with its one-piece titanium section and point, the emphasis in the industry was shifting away from the fountain pen and toward ballpoints, rollerballs, etc., and no one has come up with any particularly eye-popping advancements in fountain pen technology since the 61's capillary filler.

The model 61's revolutionary filling system did have its drawbacks, however; they are notoriously difficult pens to flush and clean, although they can brought back to life with a thorough soaking in water. Parker got so many returns and repairs on the 61 that they eventually replaced the capillary filler with a conventional cartridge/converter system.

Parker Jotter

That many people may consider the pen at left to be a "good" pen may be as deeply puzzling to us pen geeks as our habit of writing mortgage-payment-sized checks for limited edition fountain pens is to those same folks. We must recognize, however, that pens like these keep companies like Parker in business making the instruments we really covet.

Parker wisely stayed out of the very messy early ballpoint wars; their Biro-style pen, the Jotter, was not released until 1954, some eight years after the unholy squabble between Eversharp and Reynolds. The Jotter benefitted from the delay, however, as it quickly became one of the best writing and most reliable of the breed. 

Parker Duofold Centennial (1988)

In the 1980s, things began to look up once more for the fountain pen; a new generation of writers turned to the fountain pen to add some enjoyment and distinction to their everyday scribbling. New lines of fountain pens were launched, recalling the classic designs of the past such as Parker Duofolds and Watermans. This revival has progressed to the point where manufacturers are coming up with new, low-priced quality pens like the Waterman Phileas and the Parker Frontier; at the other end of the economic scale, we are in the middle of a veritable plague of limited edition and commemorative pens which are to the everyday pens we mortals use as haute couture is to the clearance rack at J.C. Penney.