8 ms·
The humble ball point pen. People forget how cumbersome and/or expensive it was to write before cheap ball point pens became a thing. You had to use fountain p
by puranjay 7y ago
The humble ball point pen.
People forget how cumbersome and/or expensive it was to write before cheap ball point pens became a thing. You had to use fountain pens. The cheap ones leaked and were an absolute mess to carry around. The ones that didn't leak were expensive.
I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years and just stash them everywhere I want
- war1025 7y ago> I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years I just checked and you can get a pack of 60 Bic Ballpoint pens for $4.50.
- hoistbypetard 7y agoHaven't pencils always been inexpensive?
- puranjay 7y agoThen you have to carry around a sharpener with you everywhere Never seen anyone walking around with a pencil clipped to their shirt pocket.
- ncmncm 7y agoI do, but you would mistake it for a pen. Mechanical pencils are a Thing. Pentel makes good ones.
- dublin 7y agoThe Pentel P225 is the best mechanical pencil ever. There can be no argument.
- hoistbypetard 7y agoAKA a knife. Which we all carry everywhere, right? :) And you put a (non-mechanical) pencil behind your ear, rather than clipping it to your pocket.
- inetknght 7y agoInstead of leaking everywhere we now have a new problem: ink dries up before it's used and now they're landfill.
- dublin 7y agoFountain pens are the ultimate in no-waste - Clean them, refill them and keep using them. I have a handful, the oldest is 73 years old, but I have several that are around 50 years old. Cleaning, refilling with ink, and very rarely, a new nib (quality fountain pens have nibs coated with very hard metals that last for decades) keeps them going indefintely. Quality is worth the cost here, but by the late 1920s we knew how to build quality fountain pens that do not leak and definitely last!
- greggyb 7y agoAnd now you can get a cheap fountain pen that won't leak and writes delightfully. Financially, you're probably better off with hundreds of cheap Bics, but fountain pen ink lasts a long time.
- inetsee 7y agoI just started exploring fountain pens (inspired by a previous HN posting), and the feature that appeals to me the most is the variety of ink colors available for fountain pens. Most ballpoint pens seem to have just a handful of ink colors, but it seems to be possible to get a lot more colors for fountain pens, and some of the colors are really exotic.
- justanothersys 7y agoAlso fountain pens draw really fast with almost no pressure and have such a consistent line. I've been making little musical drawings with them. https://tiktok.com/@whistlegraph https://tiktok.com/@whistlegraph
- tenpies 7y ago> variety of ink colors available for fountain pens Just wait until you start mixing inks to produce your own signature colour. It gets to the point where your ink is as unique as your calligraphy.
- RandallBrown 7y ago> and writes delightfully If you're right handed. Fountain pens simply don't work for lefties, without writing in a completely unnatural way.
- greggyb 7y agoI must write in a completely unnatural way, then. My hand is always completely below the current line of text. Which hand is writing simply cannot affect whether my hand touches just-written ink. Edit: Just wrote some test lines, forward and backward. My whole hand is multiple lines down in the notebook. Writing in a way so as to get my pen-hand on the same line I'm writing feels incredibly weird to me. I think it just goes to show that whatever you get used to feels natural.
- leipert 7y agoHow do you learn writing? In Germany, as far as I know, everyone learns writing with foundation pens. You can search for images with „Schreiblernfüller“ to get an idea how they look.
- MivLives 7y agoPencils mostly. It's not really common for kids to use pens outside of maybe drawing until later on at least not in the US.
- ignoramous 7y agoNot OP, but it is common in India for schools to ask kids to not use ball-points and use fountains instead.
- s_trumpet 7y agoAs a counterpoint, my school banned fountain pens and ballpoints both - it was gel pens or bust.
- AngryData 7y agoIn the US ive never used or even seen anyone use a fountain pen, although ive heard of enthusiasts for them here.
- biztos 7y agoI have a friend who's into fountain pens and for a while worked for a company that sells really nice ones. In that capacity he came to know some people who collect pens. You'd be amazed. One guy I heard of -- not-famous founder of a very famous brand -- was so into it he'd spent tens of millions building his collection, but outside the world of serious pen enthusiasts it wasn't "worth" anything near that much. A lot of the pens one collects are very limited editions but otherwise unremarkable: say a really good pen that would cost $500 but in a different color and they only make a thousand of them in that color and it costs $10,000. (Made-up numbers but $10K is not that much in the pen-collecting world.)
- musicale 7y agoWhen I discovered fountain pens and small-nib felt tip calligraphy pens I switched to them for all correspondence and most note taking; I only use ball point pens when I have to. Even round/bullet point felt tip pens are better. I would love to see felt tip calligraphy pens developed with more ink and a longer life.
- m463 7y agoMy FAVORITE of all time is the Pentel Energel 0.7mm gel pen. Super low friction, no blotching, high contrast readable ink.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]