Quill pens were made from birds' wing feathers, usually geese. The number of quills required to keep an American colony writing was formidable, often numbering in the thousands for a writing master at a large school. Gum sandarac, harvested from an African tree, was used to prepare the paper to absorb ink more evenly.
Quills were the primary writing instrument in the western world from the 6th to the 19th century. The best quills were usually made from goose, swan, and later turkey feathers.
The primary style of old handwriting in the mid 1700s through the 1800s is sometimes called Copperplate or English Round Hand. This style of writing is much more recognizable and readable than the older Secretary Hand style discussed last week, and it is much less ornate as well.
In 1700, a pen was a quill. What's that? A quill in a feather, the large feathers from the wing tip of a goose or swan (and, later, a turkey.) The best feathers were the ones that had been shed normally in a process called molting, something that most birds go through every year.
The earliest material used to write on was clay. It needs little preparation before use, is easy to work and was readily available in Mesopotamia, where the first writing developed. Damp clay could be formed into a tablet in the hand and drawn into with a stylus.
The documents/samples of hands displayed here were written between 1500 and 1690, most or all of them with a goose-quill pen and an iron gall or carbon-based ink.
Its ancient ancestor was known as the stylus. The stylus was a tiny lead rod the Romans used to make marks on a tabula. These were tablets made of wax attached to wood.
Parchment Making
Most medieval manuscripts were written on specially treated animal skins, called parchment or vellum (paper did not become common in Europe until around 1450). The pelts were first soaked in a lime solution to loosen the fur, which was then removed.
The big thing in the 1800s was the fountain pen, which used a steel point and an inkwell. The late 1800s brought us a fountain pen with its own self-contained ink, which meant not having to dip the pen in an inkwell. Before the steel pen points were invented, writers would use quills, reeds or still brushes as pens.
The quill pen was replaced by the metal nibs by the 19th century. Throughout the early 19th century, the usage of the quill pen faded and the quality of metal nibs increased. Ballpoint pens also made their mark in the late 19th century, but their patents were not exploited commercially.
Some numbers suggest that literacy is as low as 30%. 52 Other figures state that literacy remained fairly steady between 1700-1790 for men, around 60%, while it rose in women from 40-50%. 53 Nonetheless, four times as many books were published in 1790 than in 1700.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most letter-writers in Europe used paper. In medieval times, letters were often written on parchment, which was made of the skin of sheep and goats. But although very durable, it was also very expensive.
Even pirates have to write, and in the old days, when pens were not common, they used what everyone else used, that being a quill pen!
The earliest paper was called 'cloth parchment', but it often contained wood and straw in addition to cloth. All these raw materials were beaten to a fine pulp and mixed with water. Sheets of paper were then pressed out, dried and hardened.
In the past, materials like potsherds, unbaked bricks, bark of birch trees ,palm leaves, stones and copper plates were used for writing. Was this answer helpful?
John Mitchell of Birmingham started to mass-produce pens with metal nibs in 1822, and after that, the quality of steel nibs improved enough so that dip pens with metal nibs came into general use. The earliest historical record of a pen with a reservoir dates back to the 10th century AD.
By the end of Victorian Times nearly all children got a chance to learn to read and write. They used a slate and chalk at first. Older pupils would use pens with a sharp metal nib to write on paper. The nib was dipped in a small pot filled with ink.
In early colonial times, letter writers sent their correspondence by friends, merchants and Native Americans via foot or horseback.
In the mid-1600s, whilst many people would have written in Secretary Hand, the Derbyshire poet Leonard Wheatcroft used a mixed hand that is based on Italic. Most of the letters are similar to modern letter shapes. Nearly a hundred years later, Italic was dominant.
Early in the Middle Ages, the black ink was made from the carbon that was produced by burning wood. The carbon was scraped off and mixes with a paste made of tree gum and water.
The first is carbon ink, made of charcoal or lamp-black mixed with a gum. The second is metal-gall ink, usually iron gall, made by mixing a solution of tannic acids with ferrous sulphate (copperas); it too requires added gum, but as a thickener rather than as an adhesive.
The earliest pencil ever found was located inside a roof in Germany and dates back to the mid 1600s.
The oldest surviving pencil is a German carpenter's pencil dating from the 17th Century and now in the Faber-Castell collection.
What Came First Pencils or Pens? If you look at the history of styluses, pens were technically invented before pencils. Graphite pencils, meanwhile, weren't used in ancient Rome until the Middle Ages. Pens have their own fascinating history!