The fountain pen was invented by American Waterman and Ouyang Sheng, the inventor of the disposable pen. The fountain pen is a writing instrument commonly used by people. It was invented in the early 19th century. In 1809, the United Kingdom issued the first batch of patent certificates for water storage pens, marking the official birth of the fountain pen. In early reservoir pens, the ink did not flow freely. The person writing has to press the piston to make the ink start to flow. After writing for a while, he has to press it again, otherwise the ink will not flow out. Of course it is very inconvenient to write like this. By 1884, an employee named Waterman of an American insurance company invented a method of supplying ink through a capillary tube, which better solved the above problems. The tip of this pen can be removed and the ink can be filled with a small dropper. The earliest pens that could absorb ink on their own appeared in the early 20th century, using a piston to absorb ink. When a leather bladder is used in a pen, an iron piece is inserted into a slit to squeeze the leather bladder to absorb ink. By 1952, Schnocker pens with a tube inserted into the ink to absorb water appeared. It was not until 1956 that the capillary pen commonly used today was invented. The introduction and use of Western fountain pens in the 19th century made the Chinese brushes that had been used for more than 2,000 years gradually relegated to the "second line", triggering a revolution in the history of Chinese calligraphy and giving birth to modern hard-pen calligraphy. But for a long time, Chinese people have not known that hard pens are an ancient thing in China. The shape and function of some hard pens are only one step away from modern fountain pens. During the exploration and archaeological excavations conducted in the last century, Western explorers and Chinese archaeologists discovered more than 10 hard pens cut from bamboo tubes, reed tubes, bamboo tubes, tamarisk and other materials in western China. Among them, the most amazing ones are the reed tube pen discovered by the British Stein in 1906 from the Milan ruins in Ruoqiang County, Xinjiang, and the bamboo tube pen discovered by Chinese archaeologists in the Xixia ruins of Zhangyibao in Wuwei, Gansu in 1972. From a shape point of view, the two pens are very similar. They are both crafted from wooden materials and have sharp nibs and horse-shaped feeds. What is unbelievable is that there is a gap in the middle of the tongue of these two pens, which is double-petaled and pointed. It is similar to the tongue of today's fountain pens. Li Zhengyu, a researcher at the Dunhuang Academy and a member of the academic theory committee of the Chinese Hard Pen Calligraphers Association, said: "The shape and principle of the pen feed are roughly the same as those of modern fountain pen feeds, which has pioneered the production process of modern fountain pen feeds." There is a slit in the center of the pen feed. It increases the softness of the pen tip, weakens the stiffness, reduces the chance of scratching the paper, and at the same time opens up a channel for the ink to slowly penetrate, making writing more fluent. Judging from archaeological records, three identical pens were unearthed at the Milan site in Ruoqiang County, Xinjiang and the Xixia site in Zhangyibao, Wuwei, Gansu Province at that time, indicating that this kind of pen was not an orphan; from a chronological point of view, the pens unearthed from these two sites In the 3rd century AD and 12th century AD respectively, this is 1,600 and 700 years earlier than the earliest invention of the modern fountain pen. Unfortunately, the value and significance of these two pens have only been recognized by Chinese scholars in recent years. In fact, this is not the earliest hard pen unearthed in China. In 1991, a miner discovered a Han Dynasty goblet, two copper arrowheads and a bamboo-cut utensil at the Han Dynasty Gaowang Sui ruins on the southeast bank of Haranur Lake in the northwest of Dunhuang City. For more than 10 years, archaeologists have been explaining this bamboo artifact as "looking like a bamboo stick, with unknown purpose." However, they did not know that this is the earliest bamboo-cone pen discovered in China so far, and it dates back nearly two thousand years. Li Zhengyu said that there are records in Chinese history books that "ancient pens were mostly made of bamboo." This Han Dynasty bamboo-cone pen discovered at the Gaowang Sui site in Dunhuang is of this type. The pen is flat in shape, with one end flush and the other sharpened. Judging from the lacquer marks remaining on the pen tip, it has obviously been used for writing, which just reflects the historical fact of "writing on bamboo stiles dipped in lacquer" in ancient China. The earliest fountain pen (fountain pen) in the West was invented by the British Sheaffer in the early 19th century. In 1908, the British Dick O'Hugh designed a new fountain pen that stored ink in the pen barrel (in the same year, the American Waterman also invented a similar pen). This kind of pen is very popular because it is easy to carry and use. . The large-scale promotion and use of fountain pens was the advent of the Parker pen in the 20th century.
In 1932, researchers from the American Parker Company invented a fountain pen with a vacuum water-absorbing structure. This pen quickly spread around the world because of its simple operation and long use time. Li Zhengyu said that due to the lack of historical materials and the in-depth study of relevant research, people's understanding and research on ancient Chinese hard pens are still at the primary stage. Some hard pens discovered many years ago are still "locked up" in museums around the world and have not been known to the public for a long time. . In addition, the relationship between ancient Chinese hard pens and modern Western fountain pens is still difficult to completely sort out and requires further demonstration. However, Li Zhengyu believes that from the similarity in the shape and principle of the pen feed, it can be seen that ancient Chinese hard pens are closely related to modern Western pens, at least they are distant ancestors
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