The fountain pen's design came after a thousand years of
using quill pens. Early inventors observed the apparent natural ink
reserve found in the hollow channel of a bird's feather and tried to
produce a similar effect, with a man-made pen that would hold more ink
and not require constant dipping into the ink well. However, a feather
is not a pen, only a natural object modified to suit man's needs.
Filling a long thin reservoir made of hard rubber with ink and sticking
a metal 'nib' at the bottom was not enough to produce a smooth writing
instrument. Lewis Waterman, an insurance salesman, was inspired to
improve the early fountain pen designs after destroying a valuable sales
contract with leaky pen ink. Waterman's idea was to add an air
hole in the nib and three grooves inside the feed mechanism.
Waterman patented his first practical fountain pen in 1884, but
writing instruments designed to carry their own supply of ink had
existed in principle for over one hundred years before Waterman's
patent. For example, the oldest known fountain pen that has survived
today was designed by a Frenchmen named M. Bion and dated 1702. Peregrin
Williamson, a Baltimore shoemaker, received the first American patent
for a pen in 1809. John Shaeffer received a British patent in 1819 for
his half quill, half metal pen that he attempted to mass manufacture.
John Jacob Parker patented the first self-filling fountain pen in
1831. However, early fountain pen models were plagued by ink
spills and other failures that left them impractical and hard to sell.
