Continued from Part I, above.

While Waterman had discovered the crucial key in regulating ink-flow, he hadn’t yet figured out how to stop a pen leaking! In the 1880s, all the way until the 1910s, most pens were called ‘eyedropper-fillers’. This meant that to fill the pen, you pulled it apart and filled the barrel (main tube) of the pen with fountain pen ink from a regular eyedropper. Eyedropper pens held a ton of ink, but they were prone to leaking from the seams. To stop this, people tried all kinds of things such as tighter-fitting caps, screw-down barrels and retractable-nib pens (which were called ‘safety pens’), but it wasn’t until the 1890s that a man named Roy Conklin came along with the solution.

Ca. 1920 Waterman black hard-rubber gold filigree retractable-nib eyedropper safety-pen.

Roy Conklin and the Self-Filling Pen.

Mr. Conklin had brains. Why should the ink be stored inside the barrel of the pen, where it was liable to leak out and create a damn mess all over the place? Surely, he reasoned, it would make more sense to store ink inside a special, inner-tube or ink-sac, inside the barrel of the pen, to prevent it from leaking? Yes, Conklin liked this idea. With careful experimenting, he soon devised a way for ‘sac-pens’ to be filled with ink, using the simple physics of vacuums and air-pressure. The result of his labours came out in 1901 – The famous Conklin Crescent-Filler, the world’s first successful self-filling, non-leakable, mass-produced fountain pen!

Ca. 1901 Conklin Crescent-Filler in black hard rubber.

The Conklin Crescent-Filler was revolutionary. Almost overnight, Conklin had hit upon something which people had been praying for, for centuries. A pen with a portable ink-supply that was easy to refill and which didn’t leak and create a mess! Indeed, the Conklin Crescent-Filler was so popular that the American author Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), became an enthusiastic user and promoter of Conklin’s new product. The famous writer’s photograph and testimonies appeared on several 1900s Conklin pen advertisments, and Twain used a Conklin Crescent-Filler from ca. 1903 until he died seven years later in 1910. In one testimony, Twain said that the Conklin pen was wonderful because it didn’t roll off the desk and fall onto the ground and its reliablity saved him from previously, frequent utterances of profanity.

The Golden Age of the Fountain Pen.

With Waterman and Conklin’s new inventions, the golden age of the fountain pen, from about 1900 until the 1960s, was born. Pen companies were founded almost overnight and designs and filling-systems ranged from the ingenious to the insane, from the remarkable to the repulsive. Pen companies such as Parker, Sheaffer, Wahl-Eversharp, Onoto, Conway-Stewart, Montblanc, Pelikan and dozens of others sprung up, all within years of each other.

Many famous pen-designs came out over the next few years, from the Parker Jack-Knife, Duofold, Vacumatic, ’51’ and ’45’, the Sheaffer Lifetime, Balanace, Snorkel, the Wahl-Eversharp Art Deco and Skyline, and one of the most famous pen-designs ever, the Montblanc 149.

Now, fountain pens were stylish, dependable, ever-changing and innovating, they were portable and unique. But it wasn’t to last.

One of the biggest problems with fountain pens was that they leaked in the unpressurised compartments of early airplanes. For pilots and navigators who required an inky writing instrument at 5,000ft, the fountain pen was far from ideal. Also, fountain pen ink, which is largely water, was prone to smudging.

Mr. Biro and the…Biro.

In the 1930s, Laszlo Biro (pronounced ‘beero’) was a Hungarian journalist. As a journalist, he obviously did a lot of writing every single day, but he was frustrated by the fact that fountain pen ink, being mostly made up of water, was easily smudged. Biro noticed that the ink used in printing-presses dried almost instantaneously because it was thicker and contained less water. When he filled up his fountain pen with this ink, though, the only thing that happened was that the pen clogged up like a broken toilet. Laszlo and his brother Georg had to figure out a new type of ink, and more importantly, a new type of pen.

The ballpoint pen as we know it today, was finally perfected (in a manner of speaking), in the 1930s and 1940s. During this time, the fountain pen was still king, and would continue to be king for another 20-40 years. The fact was, that early ballpoint pens, like the fountain pens they were designed to replace, leaked. And when they leaked, they caused a hell of a mess. Unlike fountain pen ink which is mostly water, and therefore relatively easy to wash off, ballpoint ink is a thick, pasty substance which can stick to and stain clothes like paint. Nobody wanted a pen which stained their clothes even worse than fountain pens, so nobody bought them. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the ballpoint pen was really perfected and pen-companies such as Parker, started to market them. One of the first successful ballpoint pens was the Parker Jotter, which came out in 1954. Over 50 years later, and the same pen is still being made today.