History of Writing and Writing Instruments
The history of writing instruments by which humans have recorded and
conveyed thoughts, feelings and grocery lists, is the history of civilization
itself. The cave man's first inventions were the hunting club and the
sharpened-stone, an all-purpose tool used for killing and skinning animals.
The latter was also adapted into the first writing instrument. The cave men
scratched pictures into the walls of their cave dwellings. The cave drawings
represented events in daily life such as the planting of crops or hunting
victories.
With time, record keepers developed systematized symbols from their
drawings. These symbols represented words and sentences, but were easier and
faster to draw and universally recognized for meaning. The discovery of clay
made portable records possible. Early merchants used clay tokens with pictographs
to record the quantities of materials traded or shipped. These tokens date back
to about 8,500 B.C. With the high volume of and the repetition inherent in
record keeping, pictographs evolved and slowly lost their picture detail. They
became abstract-figures representing sounds in spoken communication. The alphabet
replaced pictographs between 1700 and 1500 B.C. The current hebrew alphabet and
writing became popular around 600 B.C. About 400 B.C. the greek alphabet was
developed. Greek was the first script written from left to rigt. From Greek
followed the Byzantine and the Roman (later Latin) writings. In the beginning,
all writing systems had only uppercase letters. When the writing instruments
were refined enough for detailed faces, lowercase was used as well
(around 600 A.D.).
The earliest means of writing that aproached pen and paper as we know
them today was developed by the Greeks. They employed a writing stylus, made
of metal, bone or ivory, to place marks upon wax-coated tablets. The tablets
made in hinged pairs, cloed to protect the scribe's notes. The first examples
of handwriting (purely text messages made by hand) originated in greece. The
Grecian scholar, Cadmus, invented the written letter-- text messages on paper
sent from one individual to another.
Writing was advancing beyond chiseling pictures into stone or wedging
pictographs into wet clay. The chinese invented and perfected "Indian Ink".
Originally designed for blacking the surfaces of raised stone-carved heiroglyphics,
the ink was a mixture of soot from pine smoke and lamp oil mixed wth gelatin
of donkey skin and musk. The ink invented by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu
(2697 B.C.) became common by the year 1200 B.C. Other cultures developed inks
using the natural dyes and colors derived from berries, plants and minerals.
In early writings, different colored inks had ritual meaning attached to each color.
The invention of inks paralelled the introduction of paper. The early
Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, and Hebrews, used papyrus and parchment papers.
One of the oldest pieces of writing on papyrus known to us today is the Egyptian
"Prisse Papyrus" which dates back to 2000 B.C. The Romans created a reed-pen
perfect for parchment and ink, from the hollow tubular stem of march grass,
especially from the jointed bambo plant. They converted bamboo stems into a
primitive form of a fountain pen. They cut one end into the form of a pen nib
or point. A writing fluid or ink filled the stem. Squeezing the reed forced
fluid to the nib.
By 400 A.D. a stable form of ink developed, a composite of iron-salts,
nutgalls and gum. The basic formula remained in use for centuries. It's color
when first applied to paper was bluish-black, rapidly turning into a darker
black, and then over the years fading to the familiar dull brown commonly seen
on old documents. Wood-fiber paper was invented in China in 105 A.D. but it only
became known about (due to Chinese secrecy) in Japan around 700 A.D. and was
brought to Spain by the Arabs in 711 A.D. Paper was not widely used throughout
Europe until paper mills were built in the late 14th century.
The writing instrument that dominated for the longest period in history
(over one-thousand years) was the quill pen. Introduced around 700 A.D., the
quill is a pen made from a bird feather.The strongest quills were those taken
from living birds in the spring from the five outer left wing feathers. The
left wing was preferred because the feathers curved outward and away when used by
a right-handed writer. Goose feathers were the most common; swan feathers were
of a premium grade being scarcer and more expensive. For making fine lines,
crow feathers were best, followed by the feathers of the eagle, owl, hawk and
turkey.
Quill pens lasted for only a week before it was necesary to replace them.
There were other disadvantages associated with their use, including a lengthy
preparation time. The early European writing parchments made from animal skins
required much scraping and clenaing. A lead and ruler made margins. To sharpen
the quill, the writer needed a special knife (origins of the term "pen knife")
Beneath the writer's high-top desk was a coal stove, used to dry to ink as fast
as possible.
Plant-fiber paper became the primary medium for writing after another
dramatic invention took place: Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press
with replaceable wooden or metal letters in 1436. During the coming centuries, many
newer printing technologies were developed based on Gutenberg's printing
machine.
Articles written by hand had resembled printed letters until scholars
began to change the form of writing, using capitols and small letters, writing
with more of a slant and connecting letters. Gradually writing became more suitable
to the speed the new writing instruments permitted. The credit of inventing
Italian "running hand" or cursive handwriting with its Roman capitols and small
letters goes to Aldus Manutius of Venice, who departed from the old set forms in
1495 A.D. By the end of the 16th century, the old Roman capitols and Greek
letterforms transformed into the twenty-six alphabet letters we know today, both
for uppercase and lowercase letters. When writers had both better inks and paper,
and handrwiting had developed into both an art form and an everyday occurace,
man's inventive nature once again turned to improving the writing instrument,
leading to the development of the modern fountain pen.
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