Education

Fountain Pen Filling Systems Where Pen Waltzes With Ink

The writing instrument that dominated for the longest period in history was the quill pen. Quill pens, made from the wing feathers of geese, lasted for only a week before they needed to be replaced. When handwriting developed into an art form, inventors began improving the writing instrument with newer technologies.
Fountain Pen innovators created filling systems that gave optimum performance in their reservoir designs. The earliest fountain pens were filled through the use of an eyedropper. An eyedropper was used to transfer ink from the bottle to the pen. However, this process was messy and inconvenient. There are three main components in a fountain pen – the reservoir, the feed mechanism and the nib. The reservoir holds the ink, the feed mechanism channels the ink from the reservoir to the nib and the nib (usually made of gold or steel) does the actual writing.
There are two key methods for filling a pen: by cartridge or self-filling. Although the use of a cartridge is extremely convenient and less messy, the self-filling procedure holds a higher esteem over cartridges.
There are two techniques that allowed fountain pens to be self-sufficient: The lever filler and the button filler. All of the fillers had some success but brought a few concerns in the area of regular maintenance. Self filling pen designs included lever fillers, button fillers, twist fillers, blow fillers, pump fillers, vacumatic fillers, sleeve fillers and piston-filling techniques. Several different patents were issued for the self-filling fountain pen designs. Here are six historical inventions of self filling designs that shaped the future of fountain pen’s global longevity:
1. The Button Filler: Patented in 1905 and first offered by the Parker Pen Co. in 1913. This was an alternative to the eyedropper method that was used by Parker for their famous Duofold line of pens.
2. Lever Filler: Walter Sheaffer patented the lever filler in 1908. The W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company of Fort Madison, Iowa introduced it in 1912. An external lever depressed the flexible ink sac. The lever fitted flush with the barrel of the pen when it was not in use.
3. Crescent Filler: Roy Conklin of Toledo commercially produced the first one later called the click filler. When two protruding tabs on the outside of the pen were pressed, the tabs would make a clicking sound when the sac was full.
4. Coin Filler: Matchstick type filler using a coin was developed by Lewis Edson Waterman in an attempt to compete with the winning lever filler patent belonging to Sheaffer. A slot in the barrel of the pen enabled a coin to deflate the internal pressure plate, a similar idea to the matchstick filler.
5. Matchstick Filler: Estimated introduction was around 1910 by the Weidlich Company. A hole in the side of the barrel pushed the pressure bar with a matchstick.
6. The Piston Filler: Launched to stardom in 1930, when the German firm Pelikan licensed the technology and used it in its first self-filling pen, the Pelikan 100.
Fine penmanship was essential for anyone involved in the correspondence business (clerical, bookkeepers, stenographers, musicians, etc.). The advancement of fountain pen manufacturing came with many successes and failures to perfect self-filling mechanisms and deter interruption of service. Innovation created secure usage and helped to prevent messy leaks. Effective and reliable filling systems were refined and installed in fountain pens creating an enjoyable experience through function and style.

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