Jenny Andersen, age 13 of Carson City, Nov., for her question:
WHEN WERE WRITING IMPLEMENTS FIRST USED?
Writing implements are tools used to make marks on or in a particular surface or to leave such marks by removing part of the surface. The tool is controlled by the movements of the fingers, hand, wrist and arm of the writer.
The earliest form of Western writing was called cuneiform and it was used by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians. An angular stick of three or four sides was pressed into soft clay that was then baked, making these wedge shaped marks permanent.
The next major development in writing tools were the use of brush and of the mallet and chisel by the Greeks. Writing on ancient Greek pottery was done with a small round brush and early Greek letters were also incised on stone with a metal chisel driven by a mallet.
By the beginning of the first century A.D., Roman writing implements varied according to both the purpose of the writing and the surface used. School exercises and ephemeral writing, or writing intended only to last a short time, were done with pointed styluses made of metal or bone on small wax coated wooden tablets. Letters were scratched on the waxed surface with the pointed end of the stylus and erasures were made with the other, blunt end of the same tool.
Permanent writing by the Romans was done on papyrus with a reed cut to a point and dipped in ink. Inscription writing was done with mallet and chisel, but the style of these inscribed letters, with their variations from thick to thin strokes, shows the use of a broad edged tool.
The rise and spread of Christianity increased the demand for permanent written religious documents. Vellum or parchment replaced the papyrus roll and the quill replaced the reed pen. Quill pens were made of the outer wing feathers of geese, swans, crows and turkeys.
The earliest reference to quill pens was in the sixth century A.D.
By the 18th century paper had replaced vellum as the chief writing surface. During this period attempts were made to invent a lasting writing tool to replace the quill.
Horn, tortoise shell and gemstones were tried as pen points but steel was eventually used for permanent writing implements. Although pens of bronze may have been known to the Romans, the earliest mention of "brazen pens" was in 1465.
The first patented steel pen point was made in 1803 by an English engineer named Bryan Donkin.
Use of the quill rapidly declined during the 19th century, especially after the introduction of free public education for children. More emphasis was then placed on the teaching of writing than on teaching the skill of quill cutting.
In 1884 a New York insurance agent named Lewis Waterman patented the first practical fountain pen containing its own ink reservoir. By the 1920s the fountain pen was the chief writing instrument in the West and remained so until the introduction of the ball point pen after World War II.
A Hungarian inventor named Georg Biro in 1938 invented a viscous, oil based ink that solved the earlier problem of ball point pens that did not write well.