For thousands of years, humans have been leaving their mark. Some cave paintings of people and animals are at least 25,000 years old. However, the time for human beings to record history with pen is much shorter. The development of pen-making technology over more than two thousand years is the best embodiment of human creative thinking.
2000 BC: The Chinese wrote with brushes made of mouse hair. The ink was made from a mixture of soot, lamp oil and gel.
1200 BC: The Egyptians extracted natural dyes and colors from berries, plants and minerals to make black water. The "pen" is a thin reed. 600 years later, the Egyptians invented papyrus.
AD 400: Many civilized societies invented more stable ink. It is made from a mixture of iron salts, oak galls and gum arabic. This basic recipe has been used for centuries.
700 AD: The Romans invented the quill (quill pen), which used feathers from the wings of a large bird. The quill became the primary writing instrument for the next 1,000 years.
1548: Spanish calligrapher Juan de Iciar first mentioned a bronze pen in his calligraphy manual.
1700: Nicolas Bion (a musical instrument maker in France during the Louis XIV era) was the first to leave a drawing for a fountain pen. Five of his pens have been handed down.
1803: British engineer Brian Donkin patents the first steel pen nib.
1809: Peregrine Williamson obtained the first patent for a pen in the United States, a fountain pen with ink in the barrel. However, his design had many flaws.
1830: British steelworkers William Joseph Gilot, William Mitchell and James Stephen Perry invented a method for mass-producing pen nibs. As the quality of steel improved over the next 20 years, fewer and fewer people used quills.
1884: New York insurance salesman Lewis Edson Waterman invented the first practical fountain pen after losing an important customer because the pen broke.
1888: John Lauder of Weymouth, Massachusetts, USA obtained the patent for the first ballpoint pen, but it was not mass-produced until the patent expired.
In the first decade of the 20th century: 4 fountain pen manufacturers dominated the market, they were Parker, Sheaffer, Weill-Yongfeng and Liveman.
1912: Sheaffer Pen Company added a rod water-absorbing device to the barrel of the fountain pen. Before that, people used droppers to add ink to fountain pens.
1935: Liveman introduced the ink sac, which was a small glass tube with a cork stopper.
1938: Hungarian journalist Ladislaus Biro and his brother Georg invented the first practical ballpoint pen. It uses printing inks that dry quickly. The British government later gave them permission to make ballpoint pens for British Air Force pilots. Ballpoint pens will not leak oil at high altitudes, but fountain pens will leak ink.
1945: Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds redesigned Biro's invention and introduced it to the United States. At the time, Biro's invention was not patented in the United States. Yongfeng Company, which holds the patent rights for Biro's invention, quickly brought their products to the market. The new fountain pen was a sensation and sold very well.
1950: French Baron Marcel Bish established BAK. His company specializes in mass-producing ballpoint pens. (Today, BAK is the world's largest pen company, selling 21 million pens a day, 7.6 billion a year.)
1951: After the initial enthusiasm, the public discovers the high price of ballpoint pens, And unreliable. Ballpoint pen sales have plummeted. Fountain pens are making a comeback.
1954: Parker Pen Company launches the "Jotter" ballpoint pen. This new, more reliable ballpoint pen writes five times longer than its most popular counterpart. Ballpoint pen sales are back on the rise.
1962: Horie Oyosaki of the Tokyo Stationery Company is famous for inventing the felt-tip pen.
1966: Fisher invented the space pen for NASA. The pen's ink bag is pressurized and can write in a state of weightlessness.
1979: Gillette launches a new pen that can erase writing within 10 hours. The trick is to use rubber glue to make ink.
1984: Japan's Sakura Company launched a gel-ink pen, which was an intermediate product between ballpoint pens and markers, using gel-ink.