Journey Of The Pen
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Journey Of The Pen

Writing with a pen is always an unforgettable pleasure creating a rich and exquisite combination of nostalgia, creativity, tactility, beauty, and a very personal feeling

Post by on Thursday, April 28, 2022

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The passion for writing existed in human nature right from the prehistoric era. Primitive man used writing as a means of expression and to record and communicates different types of information. Early writings were primordial symbolic communication systems and were found to have been invented in China, Central America, and Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq.  The art of so-called writing started with a primitive system consisting of counting and recording goods with clay tokens. The earliest writing tools didn't use pigment to leave marks on the surface but were made to be rigid so they could engrave texts into different materials. Chinese, for instance, carved into turtle shells. Ancient civilizations used a triangular stylus to write on soft clay tablets which would be later baked. With time, there occurred the shift from the use of tokens to sketching, syllables, and alphabets drawn through incisions and scratchings. Gradually the writing art thrived as the writing tools transitioned from clay, papyrus, wood, slate, and parchment, to pens made out of quills and later reeds.

The quill pens were made of an animal quill or feather and the use of ink started simultaneously across Asia, in India, China, and Japan. The ink was a rough fluid mixture of carbon mixed and a little gum or gelatin. The carbon particles were obtained from burning oil or resinous pinewood. Solid cakes of ink were reconstituted by being ground down with water on a smooth stone. The quill pen stayed the primary tool of nonverbal communication till the invention of reed pens.

Pens cut and designed out of reeds were used for several thousand years in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Europe. The most popular and common reed was one from Iraq. A reed pen, our childhood Qalam was a writing device made by cutting and shaping a single reed straw or length of bamboo. The reed is cut with a strong, sharp knife and the nib is trimmed left oblique: the precise angle varying according to the script one wished to write. The nostalgic Qalam and the small earthen pot with white clay ink to write with and a painted wooden board to write on were the primary class writing tools of even my generation.

The progress in technology led to the invention of the fountain pen at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Over the years, the fountain pen became the standard writing tool that people would use until the recent past. Though the use of metal pens in Europe since Roman times is established by available evidence, the commercial availability started in 1819 after the production of metal nibs. Gradually pen and paper became the fittest and the best way of personal, social, official, and commercial communication.

 

As the use of the pen universalized and progressed, the Ink research for modern pens also went on. Thus started the era of glamour in personal and commercial writing. Varieties of multi-color and texture-based pens became prevalent in commercial as well as official use. Although the use of pens has declined considerably over the past 2 decades or so, Pen and ink technologies are far from declining and have progressed significantly in the last few decades.

The pen is a simple but fabulous writing device and it is in that very simplicity where its elegance and vastness of written matter reside. A sleek ink-filled tube with a metal nib as its main body and only gravity to assist the flow of ink by capillary action onto the page, there is nothing to come between the writer and the word and the satisfaction of solidifying the ideas into words is eternal. It is through that amazing combination of this little marvel and the writer's mind that great ideas have taken birth that has enhanced the beauty and charm of the world.

The experiments for advanced writing tools continued tirelessly which took a big leap when the revolutionary writing machine, The Typewriter was invented in the latter part of the 19th century.  The introduction of the Remington typewriter in 1872 in America opened up new areas of advanced writing experiences. The machine offered a unique experience and time-saving convenience of creating attractive documents with utmost ease. Creating a lengthy and a big number of documents became convenient, balanced, and more rapid than they could be written by hand. Moreover, typewritten documents were clearer and smaller than those written by hand.

However, a huge jump forward to our magical present-day technology began in the sixties and seventies when computers with screens and keyboards attached to them for programming purposes appeared on the market. By the mid-1970s writing technology got revolutionized with the introduction of writing software systems. In the following decade, the computers – which initially had been thought of as giant machines for calculating, planning, teaching, and research in the rocket, aircraft, and spacecraft technology were envisaged as new writing tools, in succession to the quill pen, the reed pen, the fountain or the ballpoint pen and even the typewriter.

Consequently, both fountain pens and ballpoint pens have now been replaced by keyboards on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, I pads, mobile phones, and a host of amazing writing software systems. Documents are being created by feeding voice commands to the computers. Nowadays writing on a laptop or even a mobile phone is as easy as cutting a cake. We have multiple applications which assist us with the technicalities of professional writing while punching the keys to form words and sentences. Writing on computers is now indispensable as it is synchronized with all commercial and official functioning. With utmost ease, we lay out our words with precise typographical elegance and perfect spelling. We no longer need to worry those others can neither decipher our handwriting. One would be lost without the ease and convenience of the computer in shaping the result of a written passage.

However, despite newer and newer innovations and inventions of writing tools and applications, the pen continues to be a handy tool for scribbling quick notes across offices, hospitals, colleges, universities, and schools.  A pen is a handheld marvel that is capable of a tremendous amount of performance. It provides means to express oneself more directly. Its connection to paper is unparalleled. The flow of thoughts proceeds with the flow of ink as the words are written and sentences take shape. It simply transmits the voice of one’s soul. A pen would provide a feel of perfection as it takes more time and effort to write. Who can deny experiencing a feeling of warmth when one receives a handwritten letter from a near none. One feels a bit more special and elevated on receiving such personalized communication. One can see the writer in his or her handwriting.  As such there's also the emotional benefit of receiving a hand-written letter. The hand-penned notes are the ones we tend to keep, tucking them into a special box or folder to pull out when we need a visit with the person whose words are recorded on the page.

No doubt the pen has surrendered its domain of influence to modern digital inventions on nonverbal communication, large scale, and commercial documentation. But it is still useful for students and office secretaries for scribbling quick notes. Rich with the history and grandeur, the idealized notion of a handwritten message, a pen may now look to be an old fashioned device and a mismatch idea to the modern technology, but the smooth gliding of a nib or the tip of the pen over the surface of the page leaving a handsome trail of beautiful words and sentences is still a cherished experience.   A pen might occasionally stain our fingers or even the dress, but the luxurious sensation of pages of sweetly created words gives us unmatched pleasure and refreshing fulfillment. Writing with a pen is always an unforgettable pleasure creating a rich and exquisite combination of nostalgia, creativity, tactility, beauty, and a very personal feeling.

(The Author is Rising Kashmir Columnist. He can be reached on: ahmed3s.nasir@gmail.com)