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Loved fountain pens as a school kid in India. You had to write in cursive and "proper" handwriting was a big deal. They would not allow ball point pens in the y
by sharadov 6y ago
Loved fountain pens as a school kid in India. You had to write in cursive and "proper" handwriting was a big deal.
They would not allow ball point pens in the younger grades.
But they were messy. Then someone came up with the bright idea of cartridges with pre-filled ink.
They were some great brands - Hero, Parker and Sheaffer.
- gramakri 6y agoA parallel universe is the ink brand. Growing up Bril was the "cheap" and popular brand. But the best one was Chelpark.
- lonesword 6y agoChelpark brings fond memories. They had a peculiar color, and it looked beautiful on paper. Of course, Bril was the workhorse.
- seshagiric 6y agoI have fond memories of using ink pens. When any kid in our broader family reached tenth grade, my grandfather would gift them a Parker ink pen. And the last day of exams was the customary throwing ink on each other.
- sharadov 6y agoChelpark had a purple-blue, which looked great!
- kalari 6y agoWas it called royal blue?
- vishnugupta 6y agoTurquoise Blue :-) Glad to have found a fellow fan!
- yumraj 6y agoInteresting, I don’t remember Bril. I had only used Chelpark.
- abc_lisper 6y agoIts been almost 30 years since I heard those names! Thank you :)
- gramakri 6y agoI forgot camel ink!
- eyeundersand 6y agoI used to prefer Camel because of the design of their bottles. Good times :)
- vishnugupta 6y ago> But the best one was Chelpark. Oh boy, this brought back memories. Turquoise Blue + Chelpark was nirvana level experience for me. Whoever (mostly teachers) noticed that shade of blue would get immediately confused. Is it blue? Is it Green? It would lead to a good discussion!
- ameen 6y agoHa! A fellow Chelpark fan, those were the days!
- SwanandK 6y agoWe had an English teacher who used to chide us for writing with anything other than a pencil till the 5th standard, and after that, would insist that we write with ONLY fountain pens. Chelpark Turquoise and Bril Royal blue were my favorites too. They both looked brilliant on paper!
- aitchnyu 6y agoI made a syringe contraption to fill Parker ink into the full size single-use cartridge. My fingers are far away from the bottle and I can use the full capacity as opposed to the plunger cartridge that is half the capacity.
- m_mueller 6y agoSame here in Switzerland in the 90s. We always had 'Pelikan' pens, a German brand specialized mostly in school fountain pens.
- nix23 6y agoHad a pelikan lefti with special lefti ink :) Buy'd a Namiki some time ago and i love it, especially the japanese ink's and pens.
- hilbert42 6y agoYou're absolutely right. I still write with fountain pens and I have several including a Montblanc, Parker and a Waterman. I find that when I write with ballpoint pens my writing deteriorates significantly although I've noticed that for many others this isn't necessary so, as their handwriting is still excellent. When I was at school I learned to write with a nibbed pen and I always had ink on my fingers (and often on my clothes much to my mother's chagrin); in fact during the early years we weren't allowed to use ballpoint pens at all! I can only guess the reason for this is that ballpoint pens don't provide the correct kind of tactile feedback that's necessary for good writing. Anyway, it seems it's so for me, I think the reason is that they offer little resistance, and what there is of it is uniform, and with too little variation, thus one needs to better control the pen's movement but fails. On the other hand, fountain pens have a solid tactile resistance that seems to change dynamically as one changes direction when forming characters. (The fact that ballpoint pens were banned at school seems to indicate that others must have the same problem as me. I'd be glad to hear from anyone who's had similar experiences.) Perhaps this is why I also find that my writing is much more legible when I write with a pencil. For normal day-to-day use, note taking and such I usually use propelling clutch pencils with 0.5 or 0.7mm leads (I've many scattered everywhere). I am sorry I never learned to write those cursive scripts to which you refer. Whenever I see old historical handwritten documents I never cease to be amazed at the excellent standard of the handwriting, and it's often in this cursive style. Furthermore, from my observation, the older the document then generally the higher the handwriting standard is. In fact, the quality of handwriting in old documents, especially official ones, seems to be almost universally of a high standard (it seems that then clarity was more highly esteemed than it is now.). It is a shame that nowadays we no longer pay much attention to the standard of our handwriting and that so few recognize or appreciate the fact. I've always believed that humankind loses something significant when a skill that's still useful— or that can be appreciated just for its aesthetic reasons alone—is lost.
- sharadov 6y agoThe farther back you go the better the cursive, my grand-dad wrote in this beautiful cursive script. My hand-writing always sucked, it got worse with ballpoint pens. Now I can barely write :-)