The Story of the Invention of Steel Pens | Page 3

as
permanent as the hard steel with which it is written. Of these pens, as I
have invented them, no man hath before seen or heard. If kept clean
and free from rust and ink, they will continue fit for use for many years.
Indeed, a man may write twenty reams of paper with one, and the last
line would be written as well as the first. They are now sent into every
corner of the world as a rare thing--to Spain, France, England and
Holland. Others will no doubt make imitations of my pens, but I am the
man who first invented and made them. I have sold a great number of
them at home and abroad at 1s. each, and I dispose of them as quickly
as I can make them."'
In an article on Writing Instruments, which appeared in the Berlin
Paper Zeitung, on the 19th of May, 1887, the author says:

"A school teacher of Koningberg, named Burger, in the year 1808,
made pens from metal, but he got poor by his trials. After this time, and
probably imitating the pens of Burger, the English began to take in
hand the manufacture of pens; especially Perry, he having perfected the
pens, as he did not restrict himself to the simple straight slit, but he
made cuts in the sides of different kinds."
In a pamphlet upon the manufacture of steel pens, published in Paris, in
1884, the writer says:
"The invention of the metallic pen is due to a French mechanic--
Arnoux--who lived in the eighteenth century, who made as far back as
1750 a number of metallic pens as a curiosity. This invention did not
have any immediate result in France but spread to England, and became
in Birmingham, about 1830, a very prosperous industry. A very curious
fact about this trade is that, in England, it does not exist out of
Birmingham, where there are about ten manufactories. In France it has
become localized in Boulogne."
There is also the "nameless Sheffield Artisan," who so frequently
figures in newspaper paragraphs as the inventor of steel pens; and
William Gadsby, a mathematical instrument maker, who for his own
use constructed a clumsy article from the mainspring of a watch; but it
is not till the beginning of the eighteenth century that we get anything
authentic respecting the making of metallic pens. "Este," writing in
"Local Notes and Queries" (Birmingham Weekly Post) mentions a
remarkable little volume supplied to the members of the States General
of Holland, in the possession of Mr. W. Bragge, of Sheffield, dated
1717. It contained a silver pencil case, in two parts, one holding a piece
of plumbago, mounted like a crayon, and the other a _metallic pen._
We have seen this unique book (now the property of Mr. Sam:
Timmins). The pen is of the barrel shape, apparently silver, and it must
be regarded as the earliest authentic metallic pen. Of the date there can
be no doubt, as the pen is made to pass through loops in the cover of
the volume to keep it closed, after the manner of pocket books, and the
book bears the date, printed on the title page, 1717.
Pope, about the same time, received from Lady Frances Shirley a

present of a standish, containing a STEEL and a gold pen. In
acknowledging the receipt of this present, the poet wrote an ode, in
which the following lines occur:
"Take at this hand celestial arms; Secure the radiant weapons wield;
This golden lance shall guard desert, And, if a vice dares keep the field,
This steel shall stab it to the heart. Awed, on my bended knees I fell,
Received the weapons of the sky, And dipped them in the sable well--
The fount of fame or infamy. What well? What weapon? Flavia cries,
A standish, steel and golden pen! It came from Bertrand's,* not the
skies, I gave it you to write again."
*Bertrand kept a fancy shop in Bath. He died in 1755. His wife is
mentioned by Horace Walpole, in his letter to George Montague, May
18th, 1749, which letter is printed in his Correspondence.
In No. 503 of the Spectator, bearing the date of October 7, 1712, Steele,
mentioning the conspicuous manner in which a certain lady conducted
herself in church, says:
"For she fixed her eyes upon the preacher, and as he said anything she
approved, with one of Charles Mather's fine tablets, she set down the
sentence, at once showing her fine hand, the gold pen, her readiness in
writing, and her judgments in choosing what to write."
Edmund Waller, about the middle of the seventeenth century,
acknowledged the receipt of a silver pen from a lady, in the following
verses:
"Madam! intending to have try'd, The silver favour which