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The Fascinating History of Fountain Pens · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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  Speaker 1: the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Get your writing instruments out
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  Speaker 1: for this one. Yeah, please do. Please do write this down.
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  Speaker 1: We thank our super producer, Max the Freight Train Williams.
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  Speaker 1: What do you think, Noel? Calligraphy Williams?
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  Speaker 2: I was going to say, Max, the pen is mightier
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  Speaker 2: than the sword, William.
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  Speaker 1: I like how you're leaning into the W on SWORD.
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  Speaker 1: That's none other than Noel Brown. They call me Ben Bolin.
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  Speaker 1: And Noel, you and I are very excited to explore
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  Speaker 1: the history of the Fountain Pen.
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  Speaker 2: That's true. We are. And what a fascinating history it is.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to go from quills to pilots and every
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  Speaker 2: place in between.
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  Speaker 1: The Superior Pen.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know about that one. All right.
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  Speaker 1: So our research associate, Ames, taught us a lot of this. And, Noel,
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  Speaker 1: I just love the way they kick us off here.
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  Speaker 1: Can you give us the gist?
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  Speaker 2: Well, in a world. Where every dentist, dog groomer, and
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  Speaker 2: life coach has personalized pens by the thousands. You're not
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  Speaker 2: supposed to take them, though. You're supposed to give them back.
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  Speaker 2: But we all know how that works. Who owns a pen?
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  Speaker 1: Who owns a lighter?
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  Speaker 2: It's like a lighter, right? It's hard to imagine what
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  Speaker 2: came before. And I mentioned a bit of a continuum
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  Speaker 2: from quills to dip pens and finally to the humble
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  Speaker 2: or not so humble, depending, because they can get a
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  Speaker 2: little pricey, fountain pens. the more elegant predecessor to the
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  Speaker 2: ubiquitous rollerball, not the fight to the death sci-fi future sport,
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  Speaker 2: but the one rattling around in just about every junk
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  Speaker 2: drawer across the planet. From scratchy to sophistication, we're going
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  Speaker 2: to examine the evolution of the fountain pen and where
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  Speaker 2: it stands today, culturally speaking.
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  Speaker 3: Ah, yes.
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  Speaker 1: So this is the wild thing. When you are using
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  Speaker 1: a pen at your ordinary day-to-day life in any sort
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  Speaker 1: of office situation, you are probably working with what we
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  Speaker 1: call a rollerball pen. That is economy of scale. That's
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  Speaker 1: a reason these pens are so easily available, so often
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  Speaker 1: stolen and given. But back in the day, writing was crazy.
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  Speaker 1: The idea of writing was like sorcery, and writing with
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  Speaker 1: ink was super tedious. And as you kind of teased,
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  Speaker 1: not tediously, Noel, in ancient Egypt, reed pens were crafted
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  Speaker 1: from a literal reed straw.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the same thing that ninjas would often use to
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  Speaker 2: breathe through when they're approaching a fort to storm. Reed straws,
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  Speaker 2: or bamboo in some cases, they would be shaped into
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  Speaker 2: a square point at one end, a term that will
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  Speaker 2: continue on in the evolution that we're going to talk about,
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  Speaker 2: called the nib, and then split down the middle. The
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  Speaker 2: nib would then be dipped into ink and used for
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  Speaker 2: writing on Papyrus, not in papyrus, the font, the much
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  Speaker 2: maligned font, though usually not for super long because these
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  Speaker 2: things would lose their points. very, very quickly and had
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  Speaker 2: to be replaced pretty frequently. Following the reed pen was
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  Speaker 2: the quill pen. And Ben, you and I both went
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  Speaker 2: to an event some years back at La France's Tavern
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  Speaker 2: in New York City, one of the oldest taverns in
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  Speaker 2: the world, or in the country, I want to say.
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  Speaker 1: In the United States.
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  Speaker 2: The United States, that's right, where signers of the Declaration
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  Speaker 2: of Independence would kick it. smoky back rooms and we
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  Speaker 2: went to a literary uh launch party for our buddy
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  Speaker 2: aj bahamas jacobs the puzzler for his book the year
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  Speaker 2: of living constitutionally and the swag bag that was passed
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  Speaker 2: out to all the guests included a quill and a
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  Speaker 2: little pot of ink and if i'm not mistaken it
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  Speaker 2: was like powdered ink that was very accurate period accurate you.
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  Speaker 1: Are not mistaken That was amazing, and we do stand
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  Speaker 1: for A.J. Bahamas Jacobs, as people will say. We had
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  Speaker 1: a phenomenal time there because we were learning about calligraphy
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  Speaker 1: and writing technology. If we go to our friends at
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  Speaker 1: the Britannica, we will see that a reed pen is
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  Speaker 1: followed by the quill. A hollow, horny barrel of a
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  Speaker 1: bird's feather used as a principal writing instrument from the
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  Speaker 1: 6th century CE until the mid-1800s. That's correct.
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  Speaker 2: The strongest quills were obtained from living birds because in
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  Speaker 2: their new growth periods in the spring, they would be
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  Speaker 2: shedding these outer wing feathers or follicles. and they were
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  Speaker 2: considered the most suitable for the task of writing. The
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  Speaker 2: second and third were particularly preferred. Quills from the left
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  Speaker 2: wing were even more preferred because the feathers curved outward
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  Speaker 2: and away from the more, you know, common right-handed writers.
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  Speaker 3: Sure.
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  Speaker 1: And also, everybody check this out. There is a preposterous
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  Speaker 1: amount of left-handed U.S. presidents. Do with that what you will.
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  Speaker 1: These quills are used from the 6th century, again, to
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  Speaker 1: the 1800s, and they were not fancy calligraphic stuff. They
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  Speaker 1: were used for writing whatever you had to write down
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  Speaker 1: at the time, stuff like the Magna Carta or the
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  Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence from earlier.
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  Speaker 2: The old John Hancock was signed with that particular type
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  Speaker 2: of writing implement.
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  Speaker 1: Classic John, right? This is an improvement over the reed pen,
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  Speaker 1: but the quill has these design flaws, as we already teased.
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  Speaker 1: Imagine you are writing a beautiful poem about to someone
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  Speaker 1: you are very in love with. Maybe it's a person,
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  Speaker 1: maybe it's America. You get about five words in and
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  Speaker 1: you gotta dip your stuff in the ink. Yeah, you
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  Speaker 1: gotta dip your nib in the ink and then you
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  Speaker 1: have to hope you don't spill it before you write it.
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  Speaker 1: This was a huge problem back in the day and
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  Speaker 1: quite ridiculous, thankfully. We have a solution, the fountain pen.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe if anyone out there is thinking, why
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  Speaker 2: are you glossing over Japan and all of their incredible contributions?
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  Speaker 2: The hanku, right?
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  Speaker 3: The stamp.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that, but also, I mean, their incredible contributions
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  Speaker 2: to calligraphy. But they used brushes, if I'm not mistaken,
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  Speaker 2: for that task. I don't think they were in the
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  Speaker 2: pen universe.
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  Speaker 1: Sumi-e, right? Mm-hmm. Also, yes, this is pretty Western-centric because
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  Speaker 1: we're looking at a mechanism, a ridiculous mechanism. Noel, when's
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  Speaker 1: the last time you wrote with a quill?
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  Speaker 2: I was going to say, I barely remember the last
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  Speaker 2: time I wrote with my hand, Ben. We have kind of— What? What?
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  Speaker 2: every day. Yeah, man, it's the muscles kind of atrophy.
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  Speaker 2: But no, I don't believe, I don't know that I've
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  Speaker 2: ever written with a quill. The one that we got
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  Speaker 2: from Bahamas, I just, you know, kept that as a souvenir,
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  Speaker 2: but I did not attempt to write with it. How
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  Speaker 2: about you?
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  Speaker 1: Oh, you know, I am cartoonish, Noel. I'll tell you this.
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  Speaker 1: I don't enjoy fountain pens for the exact same reason
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  Speaker 1: that rollerball pens exist. The Pilot V5 or V7 is
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  Speaker 1: probably my favorite writing instrument. But look, let's imagine we
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  Speaker 1: are back in olden times and we have our quill, right?
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  Speaker 1: And we have to dip it in the ink and
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  Speaker 1: hope we don't mess up. And we're Leonardo da Vinci.
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  Speaker 1: At this point, you know, that's one of our earliest examples.
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  Speaker 2: For sure. Leonardo da Vinci, known for being an incredible artist.
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  Speaker 2: and inventor, a sketcher. Uh, what is it? The, uh,
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  Speaker 2: what was it called? Am I, am I thinking of
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  Speaker 2: the da Vinci do the man that's played out? Uh,
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  Speaker 2: That's the one. Wasn't that him or was that Michelangelo?
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  Speaker 2: That was Da Vinci, right?
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  Speaker 1: That's Da Vinci.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. That's what we're talking about. So he was
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  Speaker 2: a big sketcher and he would draw plans and schematics
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  Speaker 2: and things like that. So yeah, it was discovered through
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  Speaker 2: analysis of his handwriting that his ink flow remained consistent
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  Speaker 2: rather than fading away as the quill does. And a
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  Speaker 2: lot of those sketches that I was talking about appeared
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  Speaker 2: to be done with a fountain pen type instrument, though
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  Speaker 2: not the one that we know as the modern fountain pen,
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  Speaker 2: which we're going to get to.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Da Vinci was kind of a MacGyver of his time.
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  Speaker 1: We have to be honest about that.
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  Speaker 2: He was a polymath, big time.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, just so. And so we do know that not
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  Speaker 1: too long ago, an Italian artisan named Amerigo Bombera, no
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  Speaker 1: relation to the American continent's That guy was, ooh, we
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  Speaker 1: should do an episode.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know much about this. I don't know
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  Speaker 2: much about him other than his namesake. But yeah, let's
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  Speaker 2: definitely write that down.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Max, do you have us on that one?
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  Speaker 4: I got you.
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  Speaker 2: All right, great.
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  Speaker 1: So this other Amerigo recreates the Da Vinci-designed pen for
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  Speaker 1: a TV show over in Italy. It's called Super Quark. Uh, Noel,
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  Speaker 1: do you have a good Italian accent?
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  Speaker 2: Uh, let's see when you put me on the spot
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  Speaker 2: like that, it's hard to conjure. Uh, I would say,
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  Speaker 2: you know, my, I would want to say, uh, uh,
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  Speaker 2: but that's really offensive. Uh, so no, Ben, I do not.
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  Speaker 3: Okay. Okay.
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  Speaker 1: Well, folks, just hear us out here as well. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: this idea that Da Vinci comes up with because he is,
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  Speaker 1: as Noel says, a polymath, uh, It doesn't take off.
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  Speaker 1: People are super into Big Quill for about 200 years.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Big Bird.
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  Speaker 1: You get these mentions of this idea of a fountain
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  Speaker 1: pen all the way back into the 1600s.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, a German inventor, a fellow by the name of
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  Speaker 2: Daniel Schventer, came up with the idea for a pen
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  Speaker 2: that would be made from two quills, one to hold
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  Speaker 2: the ink inside of the other, sort of a turducken-type situation.
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  Speaker 2: Samuel Pepes mentioned the idea of a pen to carry
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  Speaker 2: ink in his diary in 1663. The oldest known surviving
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  Speaker 2: example of a fountain pen was made by Nicolas Billon
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  Speaker 2: and is inscribed right on the thing with the year 1702.
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  Speaker 2: An illustrated description known as the Plume sans Fin was
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  Speaker 2: published in 1723.
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  Speaker 1: Which is interesting because we know logically that if there
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  Speaker 1: is an artifact that was engraved, it means earlier engraved.
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  Speaker 1: iterations of it exist.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm doing a real rough translation as I am
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  Speaker 2: no Frenchophile, Francophile, but I think plume sans fin means
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  Speaker 2: plume without end, which would make sense given the constant
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  Speaker 2: flow of the ink.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you don't have to constantly dip your quill
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  Speaker 1: and worry about the life of the birds. The Fountain
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  Speaker 1: Pen as Ames teaches us today, consist of three parts.
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  Speaker 1: You've got the ink reservoir inside the pen, right? And
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  Speaker 1: you've got the feed, which will push the ink from
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  Speaker 1: that reservoir to the tip of the pen. And then
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  Speaker 1: the tip or the nib is that little pointed metal piece.
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  Speaker 1: If you've got a fancy pen, While you're writing your
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  Speaker 1: notes on Ridiculous History, please check, folks, the ones that bifurcate,
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  Speaker 1: the ones that divide when you push too hard on
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  Speaker 1: the paper.
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  Speaker 2: So the feed delivers ink to the metal nib, which
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  Speaker 2: then goes onto the paper when you touch the tip
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  Speaker 2: of that nib to it. Like you said, Ben, the
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  Speaker 2: absorbency of the paper continues that process. This is the
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  Speaker 2: part that I love, the science-y part, using a concept
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  Speaker 2: called capillary action. So you might remember that from the
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  Speaker 2: way water and nutrients move up the stems of plants.
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  Speaker 1: Or when you're drinking a glass of water. take a
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  Speaker 1: strip of a napkin and put it over the top
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  Speaker 1: of the glass and have a little, dare I say,
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  Speaker 1: nib into the surface of the water and watch the
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  Speaker 1: water run up. That is capillary action.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it climbs up. So when you're writing, the paper
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  Speaker 2: draws the ink through the pen continuously until the pen
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  Speaker 2: is empty, or of course you lift it up and
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  Speaker 2: then you have to refill it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and at this point, We're talking about one of
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  Speaker 1: your favorite things, Newell, parallel thinking. We're talking about a
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  Speaker 1: lot of prototypes, a lot of good ideas. It takes
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  Speaker 1: us a while as a civilization to get to the
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  Speaker 1: final form, right? The final design. We have earlier prototypes
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  Speaker 1: of the fountain pens. We have them competing in the 1600s.
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  Speaker 1: There's the first official English patent for a fountain pen
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  Speaker 1: that is issued in 1809. And it's to, I must
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  Speaker 1: defer to you. How do we say it?
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  Speaker 2: That's very sweet. Very kind of you, Ben. I will
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  Speaker 2: take it. I will take it and run with it
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  Speaker 2: in the form of Frederick Fulch. There's an umlaut over
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  Speaker 2: the O, so that's a U sound. Yeah, Frederick Fulch.
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  Speaker 2: And the first commercially successful fountain pen was called the Penographic,
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  Speaker 2: which when you look at it on paper, it looks
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  Speaker 2: like it says pornographic, but maybe that just reminds me
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  Speaker 2: of the gutter. This is the Penographic. This was in
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  Speaker 2: 1819 by John Sheffer. But it is usually a Romanian
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  Speaker 2: engineer named Petros Ponaru, a mathematician, an engineer, physicist, and
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  Speaker 2: inventor who is officially credited with inventing. the modern fountain pen,
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  Speaker 2: because his design was first to include a lot of
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  Speaker 2: the components that we know today. A barrel, or from
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  Speaker 2: the historical description, a never-ending portable pen, like that term
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  Speaker 2: earlier that I did look up, and that means the
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  Speaker 2: plume sans fin, never-ending quill, or never-ending feather. Yeah, so
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  Speaker 2: a never-ending portable pen that recharges itself, he says, with ink.
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  Speaker 2: And at the time, this must have been remarkable, uh,
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  Speaker 2: you know, nice.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I didn't, I thought it was beautiful.
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  Speaker 1: Uh, it's, uh, we're reaching the economy of scale, ridiculous
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  Speaker 1: historians in 1830, we solved the problem of the steel nib, the,
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  Speaker 1: the little bit at the end of your pen that
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  Speaker 1: delivers ink to a page. So now we have interchangeable, affordable, uh,
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  Speaker 1: steel nibs. They get manufactured in large quantities. This happens
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  Speaker 1: in Birmingham, England, and this leads to a period that
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  Speaker 1: people call the Birmingham pen trade. And true story, over
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  Speaker 1: half of the world's supply of those little pieces that
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  Speaker 1: get the ink to the paper is Were manufactured in Birmingham,
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  Speaker 1: England for quite some time.
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  Speaker 2: The Boomingham nib boom. I know I know it well.
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  Speaker 2: I don't, but I do now. And I was mentioning
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  Speaker 2: to you guys, you and Max off mic that I
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: once subscribed to, I think what I referred to as
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: a man box and you didn't quite know what I meant.
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  Speaker 2: It is a subscription service that sends like doodly stuff
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  Speaker 2: to dudes. And, you know, it'll be like a whiskey
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  Speaker 2: tumbler or.
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  Speaker 1: Like some sort of switchblade.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I bought the switchblade separately because I'm an adult
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  Speaker 2: and I can do what I want. But it did
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  Speaker 2: come with some knives, like, you know, camping things, little
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  Speaker 2: wallets and fun stuff. But it came with a reed.
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  Speaker 2: refillable fountain pen that had these nibs that you would, uh,
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  Speaker 2: that actually were charged already with the ink. So maybe
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  Speaker 2: it's not quite the same as what we're talking about here,
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  Speaker 2: but they, the little, you know, box of nibs that
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  Speaker 2: came with was labeled as, as nibs, but they were
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  Speaker 2: full of, uh, ink already.
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  Speaker 1: We get to get to 1848 here because now we're
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  Speaker 1: on a J curve of development. We've got this American
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  Speaker 1: inventor shout out to the States. Uh, Noel, help me
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  Speaker 1: with this one. Azel Storrs? Sure.
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  Speaker 2: Azel? I couldn't have done it any better.
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  Speaker 1: Azel Storrs?
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  Speaker 2: Azel. Azel. Old buddy. Yep. Azel Storrs Lyman. He patented
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  Speaker 2: a pen that was described in the patent as having
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  Speaker 2: a combined holder and nib. And then a guy named
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  Speaker 2: Robert William Thompson invented the refillable pen in 1849. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: In 1883, we've got Louis Waterman who patented the now
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  Speaker 2: standard capillary action system. that stabilizes ink flow and really
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  Speaker 2: brings us into what we are referring to affectionately as
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  Speaker 2: the golden age of fountain pens.
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh. Classic Lewis. This is the halcyon age
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  Speaker 1: of fountain pens. Now, all of a sudden, we have
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  Speaker 1: the three, the three variables pushing up together like Voltron
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  Speaker 1: or the Avengers. We've got the iridium tipped gold nibs.
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  Speaker 1: We've got hard rubber barrels. We've got free flowing ink.
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  Speaker 1: This is coming from pure pens.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that exists by the way, pen enthusiasts,
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  Speaker 2: the world over.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. And on pure pens for all their use.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: And Ames, uh, we hope you're, we are doing you proud.
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  Speaker 2: Uh, I'm sorry, Iridium tipped?
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Wait a minute, I recognize that. Iridium is a currency
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: in the Borderlands games, if I'm not mistaken. Yes.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Yes folks uh nola max are still hardcore into borderlands
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: how's it going for you guys.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Oh i've actually fallen off quite a bit because i
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: replaced it with uh.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Uh splatoon well.
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  Speaker 2: Splatoon um raiders and now of course control residents but
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  Speaker 2: i do enjoy the borderlands games and iridium is a
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  Speaker 2: an element i think that you collect that allows you
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: to what is it max get like higher level upgrades
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  Speaker 2: or you can only use it for certain things or what's.
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  Speaker 4: The It changes between games, but yeah, it's like a
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  Speaker 4: super valuable currency that's hard to use. But to answer
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  Speaker 4: your question, Ben, I am actually thinking about doing a
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: Borderlands 2 replay because one of the best games ever made,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: one of the best video games of all time is
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: still Borderlands 2.
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  Speaker 2: It's an incredible game. I think it occurred to me
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  Speaker 2: that Iridium might be radioactive just because it sounds so
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: much like irradiated. Yes, yeah.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: The element itself is not radioactive. but there are isotopes
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that are. We don't have time for this. We got
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to get back into our fountain pen stuff. So now
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: we're basically in the early days of the Soda Wars,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: for instance, right? Everybody is making their favorite version of
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: a always on fountain pen, right? And everybody loves it.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: And everybody wants to flex. It's like having a, how
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: do I pronounce this, Nola Patek? Is that the watch?
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. Like, that is how I think
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: you pronounce it properly. But a lot of the, like,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: 42nd Street watch guys that I follow on the Internet,
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: they say paddock, which I think is wrong. But they
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: say it. They all say it. I think it might
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: just be, like, a lot of people from, like, Long
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Island and certain parts of New York take great pride
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: in mispronouncing things and doing it aggressively.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: How vague. Mm-hmm.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Maybe not quite, but you know what I'm saying.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I thought it worked.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: There's a certain word like, ask me a question or,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: you know, like they just, they know that that's not
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: exactly how he's pronounced it, but they're like, I don't care.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: This is how I say it. You can, you know, yeah.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Take a long walk off a short pier.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: There we go.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: The fountain pen did take a long walk off a
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: short pier because, uh, Amid all these massive mechanical improvements,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: this thing has a catbird seat for a while. It's
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: better than pulling a feather off your friendly bird and
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: always worrying about where the ink goes. There are decades
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: where the fountain pen, in various iterations, is awesome. People
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: worship it. It is used by Prince and Pauper alike.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Until the next iteration, the rollerball pen.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Ah, yes, the rollerball pen. This is something that we
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: start to see. showing up and kind of becoming perfected,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: I guess you could say, by the 1960s. Early iterations
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: of the rollerball didn't really catch on. They struggled to
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: replicate the success and the popularity of the fountain pen
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: because they were a little pricier. Also, they had a
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: bit of an ink flow issue, not particularly consistent.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And they were nouveau riche, let's be honest.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: And they also were notoriously leaky. Though fountain pens, you know,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: also I think there's certainly tropes about leaky fountain pens.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: But fountain pens, because of their history, they, as Ames
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: points out, had a certain je ne sais quoi because
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: they were a little more bespoke and kind of, you know, handcrafted. Yeah.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: And as we were teasing, in the 1960s, the manufacturers
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: had reckoned with the production flaws. in the ballpoint pen
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: at scale, right? The ruler ball pen. And this is
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: where we see Waterman and Montblanc, they start producing these
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: ruler ball pens with a lot more variety. And now
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it's just like Timex creating bespoke watches, right? Different ink colors, engravings,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: fancier manufacturing elements. The ballpoint pen is, gradually becomes the
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: new status symbol. So if you are, let's say, getting
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: through college or getting through high school, you have perfect
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: attendance in a year of elementary school, you get gifted
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: an amazing pen, right? And now it becomes a limited edition.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: It also, as you know, results in pretty cool Yeah.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: It just became a little bit more accessible to the
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: average human. So gradually, the fountain pen kind of became
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: relegated more to collectors and enthusiasts, sort of the way,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess we are kind of, I don't know,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: I'm only, I'm sort of new to it, but like,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: you know, everyone, you can tell time using your iPhone
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: or your computer or like, you know, a cheap digital
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: watch or a quartz watch. So people that are really
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: into watches or mechanical watches, It becomes a little bit
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: more of a flex or a niche thing or someone
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: that's just fascinated by the craftsmanship of it. But it
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: is not necessarily something that is unique. It is more
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: something that is of interest to you, you know, a
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: hobbyist or a collector.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Do you want a fountain pen?
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: I don't because I just don't write enough with my hand,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: like I was saying. There is a part of me
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: that wants to maybe get one of those cool Japanese
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: planners and maybe start doing it more, but I'm not
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: quite there yet. But I do have that nifty little
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: French fountain pen that I told you about that I
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: got from the man box. But to the earlier point,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: in recent years, much like– almost like, to your point, Ben,
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: a bit of a backlash– against the digitization of everything,
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: much like a watch collecting. Um, there is a bit
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: of a resurgence in fountain pens. Um, you will often
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: see much like the watch content that I'm always yelling
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: about on Tik TOK or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: unboxing videos of new fountain pens, um, you know, tutorials
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: on how to refill them properly and maintain them properly
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: and things like that. Yeah.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: They were once the, uh, they were once the status
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: of like the gold watch you get at retirement, right?
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Your dad would say, oh, they gave me a pen
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: and a watch when I was done breaking my heart
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: for 50 years or whatever. Now, to your earlier point there, Noel,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: there's a surging popularity in all things analog, and we
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: welcome it. collectors are coming out of the woodwork, enthusiasts
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: are coming out of the stationary, we could say, and
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: people are writing again. We are tremendously, I think all
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: three of us, we are tremendously excited about this. For sure.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And I know we're both fans of The incredibly specific
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: and precise nature of a lot of Japanese products, whether
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: it be like a bath implements, like I recently bought
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: like this really cool exfoliating product. washcloth that's long and
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: you can use it to like wash your back. And like,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: you know, it's pretty, they just, I don't know, they're
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: so good at these kinds of things. And that extends
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: to a lot of writing implements. If you've ever been
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: to Muji, which is sort of like I describe it
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: often to people that don't know about it as like
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Japanese Ikea, you can get all these crazy pens there
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: that are affordable in all different colors, but they also
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: make something called like the Pilot Kakuno, which I think
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: is something you could probably get. which is only $ 15.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: It's a fountain pen designed for beginners. It has a
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: little smiley face on the nib. But if you want
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: to go to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: you've got the Namiki Emperor Maki fountain pen, which has
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: an 18-carat gold nib. is handmade and takes months to
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: produce just one. It must be made of like the
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: center of a tree or something. That's going to run
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: you about $ 20, 000.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: U.S. dollars?
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, U.S.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Dollars.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: So we're talking high-end watch prices for a single pen.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: And it probably comes in an incredible you know, wooden case.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: It's also made from the same tree or something.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Right. And we know the name of the tree, and
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: it has a history, and you can show up there
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: once a year on a moonless night, and it'll speak
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: to you if you write to it. Yeah, very Ghibli.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: The potential here. is exactly what you're describing, Noel, because
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: as Ames was mentioning, you have this variation. You've got,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: just like your favorite pilot pen now in the United States,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: you can have a size that goes from extra fine
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: to very broad. You have different types of flexibility, and
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: you have different types of metal, including gold.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know, man.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I'm vastly fascinated by this. You can still, even today,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: get what they call a traditional dip pen, which means
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you have to put it into the ink reservoir just
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the way those problematic stalking-riddled founding fathers did when they
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: wrote the Constitution.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: That's right. And to the earlier point, I think it was,
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: what was it, the name of the website? It was Pen,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Pure Pen, I think is what it was called. There
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: are communities for this stuff, as you can imagine there
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: is for Anything. I'm about to attend New York Comic Con,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: which is the kind of thing that you go to
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: if you're into all kinds of fandom and nerdery. That
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: kind of world does exist for pen enthusiasts. You've got
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: pen shows where people travel from all around the world.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: There are attendees who will sometimes travel and stay in
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: the conference hotel for all three days. There's one in particular,
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: but I bet there's more than one.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, we got to do AIM's best joke.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's right here. We're definitely going to do it
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: because you've got folks that are pen influencers, and the
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: joke really writes itself, Ben. They're pen influencers, of course.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: It's also different from what we call pen testing, penetration testing.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: You can play along at home. I think legal will
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: not allow Noel Max and yours truly to say that
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: it is very easy to to put on an orange
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: construction vest, and walk wherever you wish. These pen enthusiasts
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: will travel across the world to see their vintage favorites.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: They will travel to teach and hang out with each other.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: There is a huge community of people who love fountain
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: pens and it actually made it all the way to
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court of the United States. SCOTUS, our nine
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: creepy ringwraiths, did issue the following statement. I'll read it
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: here in full. We'll keep it short.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: Quill pens have remained part of the courtroom scene. White
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: quills are placed on council tables each day that the
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: court sits. as was done at the earliest sessions of
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: the court. End quote.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Noel, do you think the Supreme Court is using quills
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: right now? I think they're using regular pens.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine that a lot of the folks sitting
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: on the Supreme Court even know how to write.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Shady. Shady, shade, shade. Some of them are fine. Well-deserved, though.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: It is the kind of thing, though, that I could
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: imagine members of the House of Lords in the United
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Kingdom perhaps doing with their peruque wigs or whatever. Yes,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: their peruques. They do lean on tradition over there a
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: little bit more than we do. But we'll wrap this
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: episode in this incredible research from Ames. With a really
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: cool pop cultural reference from the Indiana Jones franchise, there's
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: a really cool scene where Sean Connery, who plays Indy's father,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: uses his trusty fountain pen as a kind of MacGyver-esque
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: subterfuge or diversion. He's trapped... In a small room on
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: a Nazi-controlled Zeppelin, Professor Henry Jones Sr. finds himself being
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: bullied by an aggressive Nazi officer and thinking on his toes,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: because of course he is, you know, Indiana Jones' father,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: he uses his fountain pen to squirt ink into the
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: officer's eyeballs, which blinds and disorients him and allows Indiana
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Jones and his father to make their escape. As a character, Dr.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Marcus Brody, played by the actor Denham Elliott, says in
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: the film, and also Max Williams' nickname, of course, the
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: pen is truly mightier than the sword.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: And we'll close with this one from our buddy Samuel Clemens,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: street name Mark Twain. In 1897, he said, None of
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: us can have as many virtues as the fountain pen does.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: or half its cussedness, but we can try. Thank you,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: as always, so much for tuning in. Big shout out
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: to our super producer, Max the Freight Train Williams. Big
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: shout out to A.J. Bahamas Jacobs. Noel, did you see
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: that A.J. is pioneering a new kind of puzzle?
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't doubt it. I wouldn't put it past him.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: What could be a new kind of puzzle?
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Dude, he calls it a micro crossword.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, you get it.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Is it one cross? That's it?
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: No, it's one cell. It's a one-letter thing.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: I'm going to have to look that up. I can't
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: possibly imagine how that goes. But huge thanks to that
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: man and his contributions to culture and cross-wordery.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Right. And the opposite of those accolades to Jonathan Strickland, a.k.a.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: The Quister, Big, big thanks, of course, to the rude
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: dudes at Ridiculous Crime. And Noel, if it's OK, Max,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: if it's OK, if I say it to both of
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: you guys, happy birthday to Alex Williams.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh. I did not know. I'm so bad
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: at birthdays. I will reach out to the man, the myth,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: the legend, Alex Williams, who composed our theme. We'll see
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: listen to your favorite shows.