Who Invented Ink?

The Egyptians and Chinese were the people who invented ink. They mixed carbon with glue, formed sticks with this mixture, and then let them dry. When they were ready to write, they dipped the sticks in water. 

In the 2600s B. C., Chinese philosopher Tien-Lcheu invented ink. He mixed soot, lamp oil, and gelatin. Gelatin is derived from donkey skin and musk. Use of the ink was widespread by 1200 B. C., with minerals or berries being used to make different colors.

Around 400 A. D. a different kind of ink had been developed. It consisted of iron salts, nutgalls, and gum. A nutgall is a growth on a tree at the sight of a puncture by an insect. This was a more stable form of ink and was used for many years.  

Early Pens

Around 700 A. D., the quill pen was used for writing and for hundreds of years, was the writing instrument of choice. Quills had to sharpened with a special knife. Quill pens were more durable when made out of feathers taken from live birds in the Spring. Goose feathers were usually used for quill pens, but also used were the feathers from swans, crows, turkeys, and other birds. Quill pens were very fragile, lasting for only a number of days.

Romans made a pen out of a reed, the hollow stem of tall grasses or bamboo.  They cut one end to form a point, or nib. They put ink in the reed, then squeezed it to make the ink flow to the nib.    

Fountain Pens

The person who invented ink probably could not imagine all the different ways to get that ink on paper. There were brushes, quill pens, and now, the fountain pen.  The patent for the first reliable fountain pen was awarded to Lewis Waterman in 1884.  However, there had been pens around that held a supply of ink for over a hundred years. 

A Frenchman named M. Bion made a fountain pen in 1702. An American had a patent for a pen in 1809, and John Scheffe got a British patent in 1819. John Jacob Parker created the first self-filling pen in 1831.

These early inventions were not good, they were impractical, and leaked ink.  Waterman wanted to fix the leaking ink problem after a sales contract was ruined.  He invented a mechanism with a feed for the ink and a small barrel, the part you hold while writing.

Then there was the problem of filling the reservoir with ink. By 1915, pens had a flexible reservoir; you squeezed the pen, dipped the nib into the ink, and let go. Then, 1950 saw the introduction of the disposable ink cartridge.

Following this breakthrough, Hungarian Laszlo Biro noticed that the ink used in printing newspapers dried quickly, and wanted to make a pen using that kind of ink. It was thicker that ink used in pens, so he had to redesign the nib. He fitted a tiny ball bearing into the nib and the ball point pen was born.    

Paper

The person who invented ink, Tien-Lcheu, did not have paper on which to write.  Paper made of wood fibers was used in China much later, in the first century A. D.  Around 3500 B. C., the ancient Egyptians took papyrus reeds, soaked them, laid them out at right angles, and pressed them into sheets of paper.

Around 705 A. D., the Chinese scholar Ts'ai Lun saw a wasp chewing up pieces of bamboo to make a nest.  The wasp worked the saliva and bamboo mixture into a ball, then flattened it to build a wall in the nest. He copied the wasp and started making paper in that way.  This was the beginning of paper as it is made today.

Johannes Gutenburg invented the printing press from 1436 to 1440. It had movable letters and was fashioned after the wine presses in the Rhine valley. This invention made printing much more affordable and allowed printed materials to be available to the masses.