The Story of the Invention of Steel Pens | Page 2

IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.--M. Reni de Bellwal, in a very learned volume which he has published recently, on the first campaign of Edward III. in France, says (p. 95) with respect to the fictitious pieces (documents) fabricated by Robert d'Artois, that a clerk of Jeanne wrote the deeds, and made use of a bronze pen to enable him the better to disguise his writing. This plainly refers to a pen, and not to a stylus. Is there any record of the use of metallic pens at any period anterior to the fourteenth century? It is very satisfactory, however, to establish (as the French used to say) _'les preuves de 1300.'"--L'Intermediare.
In the Vieux-Neuf of M. Ed. Fournier (vol. ii., p. 22, note) there is mentioned--according to the documents used in the prosecution of Robert d'Artois, which are in the Archives--'the bronze pen' with which the forgers in the pay of the count wrote the false papers which he required. M. Fournier also quotes from 'Montfaucon' 'the silver reeds' with which the Constantinople patriarchs used to write their letters."--CUTHBERT, L'Intermediare, 1st June, 1864.
"METALLIC PENS (XV., 68).-Writing was done in the Middle Ages sometimes with a metal stylus, or perhaps with a metal pen; with the former on wax, and with the pen on parchment or vellum. 'At Trinity College, Cambridge, is a manuscript illustration of Eadwine, a monk of Canterbury, and at the end the writer is represented with a metal pen in his hand.' (See Bibliomania in the Middle Ages, p. 103). I have in my possession a metal pen of Dutch manufacture, dating certainly from the year 1717, mounted on the same pencilholder, with a piece of solid plumbago, in a memorandum book of the same year."--SAM: TIMMINS.
"Mr. Le Chauvine Gal, Prior of the collegiate of St. Peter and St. Bars at Aosta, had in his collection of Roman antiquities a bronze pen, slit, found in a tomb, among a number of lamps and lachrymatory vases. M. Aubert has given a drawing and description of it in a work on Aosta. It was subsequently stolen from him by a collector."--- CHAMBERY, Un Savoyard, L'Intermediare, 25th May, 1868.
"METALLIC PENS,--In a precious volume (an account of the books of the Decretalia) preserved in the library of Saint Antoine, of Padua, the following notice is to be found at the bottom of the last page: 'This work is fashioned and by diligence finished for the service of God, not with ink of quill nor with brazen reed, but with a certain invention of printing or reproducing by John Fust, citizen of Mayence, and Peter Schoeiffer, of Gernsheim, Dec. 17th, 1465, A.D.' Here, then, we have a document proving the existence of metallic pens in the Middle Ages. But has any such pen come down to us? If so, could a detailed description of it be obtained? On the other hand, I am curious to know if it is possible that platinum was used in the eighteenth century in the manufacture of pens, or whether it is necessary to attribute a peculiar meaning to the 'platinum pen' in the following passage of the system of shorthand by Bertin (edit. of the year iv., p. 93) (1793). 'Those of steel and platinum are most convenient; these latter have the advantage of all others, in that they hold the ink a long time, and run over the paper easily, and are not liable to corrosion by any simple acid.' I am ignorant of what the same author means when he mentions the endless pen, which would certainly be the best. "'--J. CAMUS, L'Intermediare.
"Metallic pens were used before the fifteenth century; they were in use at the court of Augustus." See L'Intermed. (I. 69, 94, 141; II. 319.) Consult also Le Vieux-Neuf Ed. Fournier.--A.D.
The following extracts show there have been several claimants, on the Continent, who profess to have invented metallic pens, made from steel, in the early part of the eighteenth century; but the reader had better suspend his judgment until he has read the notes that follow them:
"A manuscript, entitled 'Historical Chronicle of Aix-la-Chapelle, second book, 1748,' places on record the claims of Johann Janssen, a magistrate of that place, as the inventor of steel pens. 'Just at the meeting of the congress [after the Austrian war] I may without boasting, claim the honour of having invented a new pen. It is, perhaps, not an accident that God should have inspired me at the present time with the idea of making steel pens, for all the envoys here assembled have bought the first that have been made; therewith, as may be hoped, to sign a treaty of peace, which, with God's blessing, shall be as permanent as the hard steel with which it is written. Of these pens, as I have invented them, no man