I have been editing and rearranging my blog posts, and have collected them in a book titled Fountain Pen Etymologies, The Story Of Pens, Theory, Vol. 1, and Fountain Pen Etymologies, The Story Of Pens, Practice, Vol. 2, both still forthcoming. With the addition of a few new essays already in process, the blog articles have been cleaned up and corrected and distilled to their essences, and have been placed in a more rational, chronological order.
There are 66 essays in the first volume, and 77 in the second one, but there cannot be a third one collecting what I call the Crazy 88’s, all the throwaway posts, and all the technical posts with lists of hyperlinks to the digitized magazines. Since the reader cannot click on the links within a book, those posts are doomed, by the constraints of the printed page, to remain in the blog.
About a quarter of all the essays are new, as you can see in the two contents lists below, both still subject to change, so this blog is an incomplete, corrupt version of the book, and with some new essays still missing. Look, I can’t give everything away.
One example of what I have done with my blog posts is to take the two large posts about the stylographic war of 1880, including the one with all the lengthy quotations of articles and ads from Am. Stat., and to rework and combine them into a super-thread essay about MacKinnon. All the links in the blog posts have been listed as URLs in the footnotes.
So maybe it isn’t thee story of pens. Maybe it’s just a story of pens, the edited and rearranged online posts of a pen researcher and lowly pen collector.
Contents vol. 1
For Words xi
1 Generally Accepted Research Rules 3
2 Essential Pen Research Tools 5
3 A Graph Of The Pen Patents 7
4 A Taxonomy Of The Fountain Pen 13
5 A Genealogy Tree Of The Pen Family 17
6 A Timeline Of Pens And Pencils 19
7 A Brief History Of The Fountain Pen 25
8 And When Did Quills Die Out? 47
9 The Funnel Inkwell 51
10 A Gloss Of The Word ‘Pen’ 55
11 The Origin Of The Word ‘Nib’ 61
12 Nibsmiths And The Word ‘Nib’ 71
13 The Wet Inks 77
14 The Dry Inks 83
15 Diamond-Pointed Gold Nibs 91
16 The Piston Fillers 97
17 Pencil Cases 107
18 Charm Pencil Cases 117
19 Fountain Pen And Pencil Combos 121
20 The Maiden Lane Merchants 127
21 Hard Rubber 133
22 The Eyedropper Era 137
23 The Ur-Stylographs 141
24 A Cartridge Pen Precursor In 1853 145
25 Twist Fillers And Button Fillers 149
26 The Trademarks Era 153
27 The First Crescent Fillers 155
28 Duncan MacKinnon 159
29 Francis Cashel Brown 169
30 The Latter Stylographs 177
31 Cross v. Cross 183
32 The Propel-Repel Pencil 191
33 ‘Plume Fontaine’ And The Stylograph 197
34 The Fountain Brushes 203
35 Recurring Precursors 207
36 Both Sides, Then 211
37 Stub And Italic 215
38 Pens And Nibs And Italics, Again 219
39 Obscure Obliques 223
40 The Straight Pen 229
41 Feeds And Ink Collectors 231
42 Pressure Bars And Bladders 239
43 The Evolution Of The Clip 251
44 The Cartridge Pens 257
45 The Waterman’s Travel Ink 261
46 The Safety Eyedroppers 265
47 The Jointless Pens 269
48 The Button Filler Inventor 271
49 The Word ‘Ink Pencil’ 273
50 The Word ‘Fountpen’ 275
51 Red Hard Rubber 277
52 The Hard Rubber Substitutes 285
53 The Mechanical Pencil Decade 287
54 Celluloid Before Le Boeuf 289
55 Writes Blue Dries Blue 291
56 Nib Units And Ur-Nib Units 295
57 The Capless Vanishing Points 299
58 The Early Ballpoints 305
59 The Name Of The Ballpoint 309
60 The Ballpoint And The ‘Nib’ 313
61 The Writing Machine 315
62 Typing, Not Writing 317
63 A Facsimile Of Writing 319
64 Reading, Writing 323
65 Writing Writing 327
66 Contra Recto Verso 331
A List Of Inventors 335
Colophon 340
Contents vol. 2
Inside Out Words xi
1 News From The Colonies 3
2 John Isaac Hawkins 7
3 Peregrine Williamson 11
4 The William Cowen Pen 17
5 Douglass Woodworth Hyde 21
6 Marcus Tullius Cicero Gould 23
7 Longhand, Shorthand 27
8 Some More First Fountain Pens 31
9 The Word ‘Pensmith’ 37
10 The Easy Writers 43
11 Prince’s Protean And Vulcanite 45
12 ‘Ne Plus Ultra’ And ‘Ready Writer’ 49
13 An 1856 Fountain Pen 53
14 Penography And Penknowledgy 57
15 The Madeheim Fountain Pen 61
16 The Vacumatic Precursors 65
17 MacKinnon v. Cross 67
18 MacKinnon’s All-Metal Stylos 75
19 The Original ‘Longshort’ Pen 79
20 The MacKinnon Pen 81
21 A MacKinnon Pencil? 83
22 Pioneers And Inventors 87
23 The Waterman’s Creation Myth 89
24 Waterman’s First Pens 95
25 The Caw’s Pen And Its Effect 99
26 Wirt v. Wirt-Himself 105
27 Ball-Pointed Nibs 113
28 The Whale Inkstand 115
29 When Fountain Pens First Caught On 119
30 The Survival Rate Of Cross Pens 125
31 Waterman’s v. Waterman 129
32 Pierced By A Waterman’s Pen 141
33 The Waterman’s Ideal Globe 143
34 The Gravity Fillers 147
35 Lancaster v. Waterman 149
36 The ‘Mercantile’ Trademarks 153
37 Waterman’s Globe Section Cleaner 155
38 The Aerometric-Type Fillers 157
39 Arrow Trademark Pointers 161
40 The Waterman’s Baseball Team 163
41 The Montblanc Splat And Anti-Splat 167
42 Waterman’s First RHR Pens 171
43 The Founcil Combo 175
44 Waterman’s Smallest Pens 177
45 Pendom And Pencildom 179
46 The ‘Onoto’ Name 181
47 The Matchstick-Clip Fillers 185
48 The Waterman’s Jointless Pen 189
49 The Waterman’s Globe Ink 191
50 The Ink Tablet Pens 193
51 Trench Pens And Pompeian Orange 199
52 The Waterman’s ‘Fasces’ Pen 203
53 History And Waterman’s Ads 205
54 The Federal Trade Commission Wars 209
55 The Pompeian Brown Duofold 213
56 Early Parker Duofold Pencils 219
57 Red & Black, Black & Red, & Red Band 223
58 The Snorkel Precursors 227
59 The Poppy Pen 229
60 The Waterman’s #53 235
61 The Waterman’s Color Nibs 239
62 Gilliam’s ‘Ezerite’ And ‘Dubel Servis’ 245
63 The Parker ‘Thrift-time’ 247
64 The Waterman’s Plunger Filler 253
65 The Waterman’s Vacuum Filler 255
66 Glass-Nibbed Fountain Pens 257
67 Quink And Superchrome Ink 259
68 The Fountain Pen Ballpoints 263
69 Eversharp ‘Skyline’ Ballpoint 267
70 The Snorkel Vanishing Point 269
71 The Parker ‘Arrow’ 271
72 ‘Frankenpens’ And ‘Squeezacs’ 275
73 ‘Sumguy’ And ‘Banana Pens’ 279
74 A Vintage Pen Repair Shop 283
75 A Pen Collecting Timeline 287
76 The Writing Hand 291
77 After Words 293
Bibliography 297
Colophon 354
George Kovalenko.
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