Handle History
In the spring of 1736 the Russian troops marched on the Crimean Khanate and took the fortress of Perekop. The first to climb onto the wall of the fortress was not a warrior, hardened in battle, scrambling up, but a beardless soldier named Vasily. For this he received an officer's rank. Yes, that's bad luck: he turned out to be from the old kind of princes Dolgoruky - personal enemies of the then reigning Empress Anna Ioannovna, and the youngsters from this family were ordered to enter the ranks of officers under pain of death. Officer's rank at the "sucker" the Empress was ashamed to take away, but she strictly forbade her to teach reading and writing. In many battles participated Vasily Mikhailovich Dolgoruky, became a general, then general-governor of Moscow, but did not learn to write. Ashamed of his illiteracy, he always referred to bad feathers: "Poorly cleaned - I can not write, let the adjutant write."
And wrote at that time, as you know, feathers are real, taken from birds. Mostly goose, but there were also feathers of crows, peacocks. To prepare the pen for writing, it was first cleared in hot sand, then cut off at a certain angle and sharpened. And on how circumcised and sharpened pen, in many ways depended on the quality of the written. Many writers and poets did not trust anyone of this "important" affair. It was customary to give good feathers. In Pushkin's study in his rich case, Goethe's own pen was kept, sent to them as a gift to the great Russian poet.
But the handle history did not start with a goose feather. Perhaps, with the wedge-rods, which scribes of Ancient Assyria used? Icons-drawings were cut on the stones, scratched on the leaves of palms, on bone, bronze, copper. And maybe, with antique stylos-owls - sharpened wooden sticks?
Goose quill. Engraving of the beginning of the XVII century.(1605).
Imagine that we were in the ancient Greek school. The teacher dictates the text of Homer, and the students write down. But not in the usual notebooks, but on the plaques covered with a thin layer of wax. These plaques were placed on their knees and printed on them. And at the end of each paragraph the student always added the words: "Be diligent, oh boy, so that you will not be flogged."The guys very often had to turn the wand and blunt stupid lines with a blunt end. In Egypt they wrote reed sticks, the ends of which were chewed with teeth, so that they became softer. No, perhaps, all these tools are difficult to name handles. But the same Egyptians had a real fountain pen - it did not have to dunk now and then into the inkwell.
It was a leaden tubule with a pointed end. Inside the tube inserted a reed, filled with a dark liquid. The liquid gradually drained to the pointed end, and when a tube was taken along the papyrus, a clear black trace remained on it. Such a pen archaeologists found in the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun.
The invention of the ancient Egyptians was completely forgotten, and for many centuries an elastic goose feather creaked over the parchment of manuscript books, splashed blots on the recipes of alchemists, signed decrees of kings. But literate people became more and more, and the demand for feathers grew. It should be noted that not all feathers from the wing were suitable, but only 2-3.What kind of flocks of geese had to be planted?
It would be bad for the geese if the inventors did not come to their aid. So, they invented the structure, called the "eternal pen."It was really a structure: under the ceiling hung a tank of ink that ran down the rubber tubes down to the metal bars with the cranes.
Metal feathers.
If you rotate the tap and squeeze the fingers of such a rod, the ink will not flow if you release-drain down."Perpetual feathers" were installed in offices, in banks and other offices. But you can not put such a structure at home. And one ingenious person came up with a way to save feathers - he cut them into several parts, each of them imprisoned and inserted into a wand. Hence the long-lived word "vstavochka" went for a long time. Then the same person put a plug in the metal tube on one side and a goose feather on the other. The tube was filled with ink. One can only guess how many blots were obtained! But they tried not to pay attention to such trifles.
The development of a knitting pen from cuneiform writing to a pen with a metal pen.
The sovereignty of goose feathers ended in the 18th century. Here's how it happened. One person, who had to write a lot, was a servant. He was very sorry for his master, who did not have time to change his feathers. And then he came up with a feather made of steel. True, the inventor did not think to make a longitudinal slot on the tip of the pen, so it splashed ink and wrote without pressure. As soon as such a slot was invented, the quality of the letter improved significantly. And all began to write with metal feathers. They made them from steel, silver and even gold. They were expensive, and the owner of a steel, gold, or a jaunty feather inserted him in a wand strewn with diamonds.
What feathers have not been invented in the past century!
They were in the form of the Eiffel Tower, and with portraits of Napoleon or the English queen. And noble people even decorated their feathers with their arms. Only by the beginning of this century the steel feather has migrated to the school bag.
For many years, schoolchildren in the class of chiseling, dipping pen in ink, pulled out with pressure on the entries:
But soon a fountain pen had a powerful competitor: a pen ball. It is believed that it was invented by the Hungarian chemist Biro. He had a strange habit of writing down the results of his experiments on anything: on a board, desk, a glass of a hood, a matchbox. Then he hardly understood his notes: after all, not all materials are well perceived by a pencil lead. Then the chemist began to experiment and. .. invented a ballpoint pen with thick paste. He received the patent in 1938, and in 1943 the British began to release his pen for military pilots, since, unlike the ink, it "did not flow" at altitude and was trouble-free with observations in the cockpit. After the Second World War, such handles suddenly became very fashionable. And then the American businessmen became seriously interested in the ballpoint pen. Having hired lawyers, they found a loophole in patent claims, and the Hungarian invention practically migrated overseas.
Modern fountain pens.
But the idea that the history of the ballpoint pen is only a few decades old, needs to be revised. Armenian scientists on the drawing, dated 1166 year, restored the real ballpoint pen - the tool of ancient scribes! This is a bamboo stick of two halves, in the middle of which was a hollow ball, filled with ink. The scribe's lines reached us: "Consider worthy of memory, that 900 lines were written, once only dipped the pen!"
And here are some interesting facts. For a minute a person manages to write an average of so many letters that, stretch them, you get a line length of 140 centimeters.
The most writing people are schoolchildren and students. It is estimated that one pupil per year has 1 pen, 3 ballpoint pens and 12 spare rods. This is enough to write 2000 pages, or 44 notebooks of 24 sheets each.
One student has 1 pen, 2 ballpoint pens and 24 pins, this is enough for 19 common notebooks of 96 sheets.
The time will come, and, perhaps, the ballpoint pens that are so familiar to us will displace the incographs and the placards. In the first plastic will replace all the metal parts of the handle and rod, in the second - a thin capillary tube becomes the "working tool".At the ink fountain pen the feather will take a conical shape, it will be made both from metal, and from plastic. Such feathers can be "tuned" to any brand of ink.
In addition to fountain pens and ballpoint pens, pens are very popular today. They can draw, draw, do color graphics, paint, paint. If the felt-tip pen is filled with a special chemical compound, then it is able to write and draw on glass, metal, skin, fabrics, polymer film.
All kinds of pens are invented innumerable: with a calendar, an electronic clock and even a miniature computer. This pen is a little more than usual, but it can perform four arithmetic operations and calculate percentages. The pen has a small display on which the initial data and the final result are displayed. One of the problems of "communication" of a person with a computer is the transfer of information to the machine. Usually this is done with special punched cards. But their use requires some preparatory work. Here, an electronic pen will help, which synchronously sends to the computer written on the paper signs.
"Smart" handle is specially designed for builders. With its help, you can determine in minutes how many materials will be needed for a future home. The pen is drawn along the lines of the drawing, and thus all necessary data are entered into the computer memory. If you enter the data on the scale in which the drawing is executed, the computer will calculate the amount of brick, glass, concrete required by the program built into it.
But among these electronic wonder-pens the old tried and tested "vstavochka" was not lost. From the United States came to Europe a fashion for old wooden handles and ink-non-spills, which used to be the grandfathers of modern schoolchildren. Elegant ladies solemnly take out these second-generation writing instruments from their purses and carefully dip a metal feather into ink. ..
Do you know?
Pens with gold pen are not uncommon. But gold is quite a soft material. How does the pen manage its work for many years?
The tips of gold "eternal" feathers are usually made of osmiridium - an alloy of osmium and iridium, a material of exceptional hardness and high resistance to wear.