The Story of the Invention of Steel Pens | Page 4

the wronged pen to please, Made it my humble thanks express Unto your Ladyship, in these, And now 'tis forced to confess That your great self did ne'er indite Nor that to me more noble write."
Mr. G. A. Lomas, writing to the Scientific American, November 23, 1878, says:
"I write to inquire if you can give me information concerning the manufacture of metal pens in this country. I may be vain in the supposition, but I am persuaded that my people--the Shakers--were the originators of metal pens. I write this to you with a silver pen, one slit, that was made in the vear 1819, at this village, by the Shakers. Two or three years previously to the use of silver pens, our people used brass plates for their manufacture, but soon found silver preferable. Some people sold these pens in the year 1819, at this village, for twenty-five cents, and disposed of all that could be made."
The writer further says the metal was made from silver coins.
This communication called forth the following from another correspondent:
"The letter in the Scientific American, November 23, 1878, with regard to the early manufacture of steel pens, reminds me of the following note which appeared in the Boston Mechanic, for August, 1835. 'The inventor of steel pens,' says the Journal of Commerce, was an American and a well-known resident of our city (New York), Mr. Peregrine Williamson. In the year 1800, Mr.W., then a working jeweler, at Baltimore, while attending an evening school, finding some difficulty in making a quill pen to suit him, made one of steel. It would not write well, however, for want of flexibility. After a while he made an additional slit on each side of the main one, and the pens were so much improved that Mr. W. was called to make them in such numbers as to eventually occupy his whole time, and that of a journeyman. At first the business was very profitable and enabled Mr. W. to realize for the labor of himself and journeyman a clear profit of six hundred dollars per month. The English soon borrowed the invention, and some who first engaged in the business realized immense fortunes."'
We do not know how much reliance may be placed upon this statement, but, if the last assertion "that those who first engaged in the business realized immense fortunes" may be taken as a test, the whole must be received with a grain of salt. The letter appeared in the Boston Mechanic, in 1835, and at that date there were penmakers who had made a modest competence, but in no case were they possessed of immense fortunes.
In London Notes and Queries, the following appears respecting early steel pens:
"THE FIRST STEEL PEN.--(5th S., iii., 395.) Ten years before Dr. Priestley was born steel pens were in use. There are references to them in the Diary of John Byrom, who required them when writing short-hand. In a letter to his sister Phoebe, dated August, 1723, he mentions them as follows: 'Alas! alas! I cannot meet with a steel pen, no manner of where I believe I have asked at 375 places, but that which I have is at your service, as the owner himself always is."' (Remains, Vol. i., 39.)
Mr. Ralph N. James, writing to Notes and Queries, gives the following extract from the very amusing "journey to Paris," by Dr. Martin Lister, 1698:
"There was one thing very curious, and that was a Writing lnstrument of thick and strong silver wire, bound up like a hollow button or screw, with both ends pointing one way, and at a distance, so that a man might easily put his forefinger betwixt the two points, and the point divided in two, just like our steel pens."--_London Notes and Queries,_ vol. iii., page 346.
This note caused another writer, Mr. C.A. Ward, to send the following:
"STEEL PENS.--The extract given from Dr. M. Lister's, by Mr. Ralph N. James, is very interesting. The doctor there speaks of _'our steel pens,'_ as if they were not at all uncommon. When the poet Churchill's effects were sold up, after his death, Nov. 10, 1764, they fetched extravagant prices; 'a common steel pen' brought L.5." --London Notes and Queries, vol iii., page 474.
The following extract from London Notes and Queries gives very plausible reasons against placing confidence in the preceding and other notices of ancient steel pens:
"STEEL PENS. (5th S., vol. iii., pp. 346, 474.) May I ask whether, in giving the interesting references to the use of steel pens before the time of Priestley (one reference even going so far back as the seventeenth century) your correspondents have carefully considered what is meant by the terms. For my own part (of course I maybe quite wrong) I should naturally have anticipated steel pens in these references to