The Story of the Invention of Steel Pens | Page 3

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 you gave, In ink the shining point I dy'd, And drench'd it in the sable wave When, grieved to be so foully stained, On you it thus to me complained.
So I,