Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what, Mango, what's that?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: All right, I hate to start an episode this way,
Speaker 2: but I gotta be honest with you. I'm a little
Speaker 2: bit disappointed you. You actually never answered my letter.
Speaker 1: The one you slid under my door that just said, hey, Mango,
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to recording later. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: have texted me that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's the one. I'm actually I'm making an
Speaker 2: effort to try to write by hand more. And you know,
Speaker 2: while I was researching this episode, I actually discovered that
Speaker 2: there are some real benefits to writing the old fashioned way.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Like what so if you write handwritten notes
Speaker 2: in a meeting or a lecture, we actually understand the
Speaker 2: material better than if we type them. And part of
Speaker 2: the reason for this is that it slows us down.
Speaker 2: We have to process what's being said, and then we
Speaker 2: decide which words to write from that. And that's different
Speaker 2: than when we type, because when we're at our computers,
Speaker 2: we can trans describe things we hear without really thinking
Speaker 2: about what those words mean or whether they're important or not.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting, you know, I feel like, I'm such
Speaker 1: a bad note taker because often I start writing, but
Speaker 1: then my pages just descend into doodles. It's like I
Speaker 1: have no concentration for any.
Speaker 2: I can remember from as far back as our college
Speaker 2: years when you would be doing exactly that, and I
Speaker 2: remember those those doodles that were quite impressive. But the
Speaker 2: handwriting actually takes concentration, and your brain has to actually
Speaker 2: visualize the shapes that you're putting on the page and
Speaker 2: create them individually. So you're activating both the part of
Speaker 2: the brain responsible for fine motor skills and the part
Speaker 2: that does visual information processing. But the way the brain
Speaker 2: operates as it syncs up these processes is it's associated
Speaker 2: with forming memories and actually learning better.
Speaker 1: So, in other words, by not texting me this morning,
Speaker 1: you gave your friend a little workout.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean it feels so strong right now,
Speaker 2: and you know so out of the two of us,
Speaker 2: I guess, yes, I'm slightly in better shape for an
Speaker 2: episode about handwriting and the tools we used to do it.
Speaker 2: But I have faith in you, Mango. You're going to
Speaker 2: catch up. I think we're going to be good. So
Speaker 2: let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners Welcome to Part
Speaker 2: Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm here
Speaker 2: with my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and on the
Speaker 2: other side of that booth as our pal Dylan. Now
Speaker 2: sometimes he challenges us more than others to figure out
Speaker 2: what exactly he's doing behind the booth there. It took
Speaker 2: me a minute because Dylan is wearing a lab coat,
Speaker 2: which at first glance doesn't seem to have anything to
Speaker 2: do with this topic. But then I saw the prescription
Speaker 2: pad that he's holding. Did you notice this, Mango, I
Speaker 2: did notice it. It's pretty it's pretty awesome, and I
Speaker 2: think the idea is the old cliche about doctors having
Speaker 2: bad handwriting. That's our good pal Dylan fing and that's
Speaker 2: a good one, Dylan.
Speaker 1: I mean he also wheeled in that exam tables. You
Speaker 1: put so much effort into these things, but will before
Speaker 1: we go too much further, I am curious if handwriting
Speaker 1: has so many benefits for our brains. I've actually been
Speaker 1: wondering if my kids should be doing it more, because like,
Speaker 1: I don't think my kids even know how to write cursive,
Speaker 1: Like everything's on laptops these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty wild. I mean they're such digital creatures.
Speaker 2: But kids' brains definitely benefit from handwriting, and it starts
Speaker 2: when they're really young, like when they're learning the ABC's
Speaker 2: tracing letters, you know, that actually helps them recognize and
Speaker 2: understand letters better than when they type them, and this
Speaker 2: develops the areas of the brain that they'll use for
Speaker 2: reading throughout their life. Of course, they should probably learn
Speaker 2: how to use modern technology too, so you know, maybe
Speaker 2: keep the laptops around as well, But there's really benefits
Speaker 2: to both.
Speaker 1: So it's funny. I actually read this story this week
Speaker 1: about a Scottish school where they're forcing kids to learn
Speaker 1: how to use fountain pens as seven year olds. Wow,
Speaker 1: And it's because apparently you can get away with worse
Speaker 1: handwriting with a pencil or ballpoint pen, but you really
Speaker 1: have to write more neatly and legibly with the fountain pen.
Speaker 1: And the headmaster there says that slowing kids down, like
Speaker 1: you said, makes the kids understand more and really makes
Speaker 1: them comprehend more, but also it apparently raises their self esteem,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting, Like these kids feel really special
Speaker 1: because they're using these fountain pens, so I know, we've
Speaker 1: got a little bit of pen history to get into.
Speaker 1: But before that, I thought, maybe we should do a
Speaker 1: little bit on the history of writing and where it
Speaker 1: really began.
Speaker 2: Let's do it, I said, we go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you won't be surprised to know that writing
Speaker 1: originated in ancient Mesopotamia and it's around thirty five hundred
Speaker 1: BCE when the Cuneiform script was invented. And apparently cuneiform
Speaker 1: actually means wedge shaped, which is why I guess it
Speaker 1: helps you know what to picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean those are the chunky triangular symbols, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And honestly, learning the script was not easy, so back
Speaker 1: then most people only had a very basic grasp of
Speaker 1: writing events. Literacy was in common, which is how scribes
Speaker 1: came about, and scribes were responsible for writing stuff down,
Speaker 1: particularly about financial transactions and trade. But over time they
Speaker 1: started being involved with more fields and it was required
Speaker 1: for scribes to know about everything they wrote about, so
Speaker 1: they were kind of these scholars. They had to learn
Speaker 1: about everything from mathematics to agriculture, to religion, to politics
Speaker 1: and even more. And they also had to learn six
Speaker 1: hundred characters of cuneiform.
Speaker 2: Wow, six hundred characters, I mean that's a lot harder
Speaker 2: than our twenty six So how did they learn all this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so scribe school. Apparently they went to something called
Speaker 1: an Eduba or the House of Tablets, which sounds straight
Speaker 1: out of National Treasure, but definitely serious business. Classes were
Speaker 1: in session from sunrise till sunset, and most students started
Speaker 1: around eight years old, and then they didn't graduate until
Speaker 1: their early twenties. I mean, it actually kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense considering how much they had to learn. I do
Speaker 1: wonder though, like, do you think there was more or
Speaker 1: less note passing in scribal school than when we were
Speaker 1: in school? I take a lot less because of the
Speaker 1: carving and all. Probably, so, you know, staying focused was
Speaker 1: definitely a big thing for these kids, because you were
Speaker 1: plucked to be scribes, and you kind of knew you
Speaker 1: had a good life waiting ahead of you. Scribes were
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to as those who never go hungry because
Speaker 1: they had this crucial skill in a population of mostly
Speaker 1: illiterate people, and so they actually had a lot of
Speaker 1: power and a lot of the benefits that come with up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's super interesting. It actually reminds me of a
Speaker 2: word I heard from Herman Melville. It's the word scrivener,
Speaker 2: as in Bartleby the Scrivener. He's a character whose job
Speaker 2: is copying documents for a lawyer and he writes everything
Speaker 2: by hand, not because the lawyer is illiterate, he just
Speaker 2: has lots of documents to deal with. And this is
Speaker 2: pre zero obviously.
Speaker 1: You know, I have never read Melville. I feel a
Speaker 1: little embarrassed to be admitting that on this show. But
Speaker 1: that term scrivener that you mentioned is often used interchangeably
Speaker 1: with scribe because their jobs were the same at various
Speaker 1: points in history. But there's actually a huge distinction between
Speaker 1: the two. So over time, as business and legal transactions
Speaker 1: began to use written instead of oral communication, scriveners were
Speaker 1: kind of more like everyday copyists who wrote out civil
Speaker 1: documents and correspondence. Will scribes were definitely more errordyed and educated.
Speaker 1: They were associated with scholarship and art and scientific and
Speaker 1: religious thinking. And part of this distinction comes about in
Speaker 1: the thirteenth century. This is when the courts, at least
Speaker 1: in Europe began requiring written instead of oral records, which
Speaker 1: meant that plaintiffs needed the documents to be perfect, otherwise
Speaker 1: the courts could throw their case out. So Europe started
Speaker 1: differentiating between document scriveners who wrote things like legal documents
Speaker 1: and deeds, and book scriveners or scribe vibes who worked
Speaker 1: in book production.
Speaker 2: I mean, what about like notaries. I feel like they're
Speaker 2: kind of kind of in the same field in a
Speaker 2: way at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Meredith and Gabe actually had a note on
Speaker 1: these two. Apparently they were around in ancient Egypt, but
Speaker 1: only really became established during the Roman Empire. The first
Speaker 1: notary was an enslaved person named Tierro, and he worked
Speaker 1: for the great orator and statesman Cicero. So Tiro wrote
Speaker 1: down all of Cicero's speeches, which is actually how we
Speaker 1: have them, and he's credited with developing a form of
Speaker 1: shorthand called note. But he also helped with official political
Speaker 1: and financial matters. Anyway, as the legal system was evolving
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, notaries started catching on
Speaker 1: in England. Then they became essential to global exploration in
Speaker 1: the Renaissance. So this hadn't even occurred to me, But
Speaker 1: apparently on all of Columbus's voyages he had notaries, and
Speaker 1: this was because King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure someone was keeping crack of all the treasure
Speaker 1: he found and that it was all still there when
Speaker 1: Columbus traveled back. But the job has actually evolved over
Speaker 1: time to where notaries take fewer notes and basically authenticate
Speaker 1: documents and witness signature is the way you think of
Speaker 1: them today, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So he had notaries on all of these voyages.
Speaker 2: It is sort of a funny picture. And I know
Speaker 2: a lot of these images come from pop culture and
Speaker 2: movies and things like that, but you picture these voyages
Speaker 2: as filled with I don't know, I guess unsavory sailors,
Speaker 2: But I love that there was just an official in
Speaker 2: the corner like taking notes on everything.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that person was super, super popular and included
Speaker 1: in all the pirate games, and ivity is exactly so.
Speaker 1: Colonial America also took their notary game seriously because they
Speaker 1: were so important to keeping documents safe and accurately reporting
Speaker 1: facts about, you know, all the trends Atlantic commerce. So
Speaker 1: Thomas Bugle was appointed in sixteen thirty nine as the
Speaker 1: colony's first notary, but he kind of has a black
Speaker 1: mark against his name. He got busted for false defying documents,
Speaker 1: and he was kicked out of office, he was excommunicated
Speaker 1: from the church, and then he was sent back to
Speaker 1: England in disgrace.
Speaker 2: And so what happened to him after that?
Speaker 1: You know, because notaries do all the writing, it's weirdly
Speaker 1: not clear what happened to him because no one bothered
Speaker 1: to write it down. But anyway, now that we know
Speaker 1: who he was doing, was the note taking in early history,
Speaker 1: I really want to switch gears to talk about pens
Speaker 1: and the pens that have made all this history possible.
Speaker 1: So let's do that right after this break. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about handwriting, and
Speaker 1: we're about to switch gears to pens, which will I
Speaker 1: know you looked into Let's dig into it all right.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to know what the first pen actually was,
Speaker 2: and so that brought me all the way back to
Speaker 2: the first millennium BCE. Back then the Chinese used a
Speaker 2: brush dipped in ink to write, and that's the earliest
Speaker 2: known ancestor of the pen. You then fast forward to
Speaker 2: three hundred BCE and you have the Egyptians who started
Speaker 2: using these thick reeds as sort.
Speaker 1: Of like pen like instruments, and I'm guessing this is
Speaker 1: sort of like the same principle as the quill pen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty much exactly the same thing. And quill
Speaker 2: pins are super important in pen history. Actually, the word
Speaker 2: pen comes from the Latin word pinna, meaning wing, And
Speaker 2: so we know quills were in use by the seventh
Speaker 2: century because the theologian and archbishop Isidor of Seville mentioned
Speaker 2: them in his writing, but they were probably around even
Speaker 2: earlier than that.
Speaker 1: You know, I've always wondered how people ended on which
Speaker 1: birds feathers to use their quill pens, like, it just
Speaker 1: seems curious to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, apparently any large bird would do so.
Speaker 2: They would use feathers from eagles, peacocks, turkeys. When they
Speaker 2: needed to do things like fine detailed work, maybe like accounting,
Speaker 2: they would use crow quills. It was just interesting to
Speaker 2: think about the different types of feathers that could be used.
Speaker 2: But the top bird for a quill pen was said
Speaker 2: to be a domesticated white goose. Its five biggest wing
Speaker 2: feathers are considered perfect for quill pens. Thomas Jefferson even
Speaker 2: kept a flock of geese at Monticello to supply him
Speaker 2: with quills, which is not something I'd ever thought about before.
Speaker 1: That's really fascinating. It is crazy though, right, like you
Speaker 1: think about like the difference between eel's feather, a peacock feather,
Speaker 1: and a crow's feather, right, like one is magnificent and
Speaker 1: the others just kind of.
Speaker 2: Like around right right, such an insult.
Speaker 1: It's funny. Aja Jacobs was on this show talking about
Speaker 1: the Constitution earlier this year, and he let me write
Speaker 1: with one of his quill pens, and I think he
Speaker 1: was using a turkey feather and it was the worst sound.
Speaker 1: It's like high pitched and scratchy, and you can't imagine
Speaker 1: like trying to write out the Constitution with one of
Speaker 1: these things. Yeah, and Aj said when he'd write his
Speaker 1: manuscript with us at home, the sound was so bad
Speaker 1: that his wife made him do it from another groom
Speaker 1: and close the doors.
Speaker 2: So funny, only an Aja problem.
Speaker 1: But the other thing you said, which I found really fascinating,
Speaker 1: was kind of like with the fountain pins, that you
Speaker 1: write so slowly that you really have a lot of
Speaker 1: time to process your thoughts and also be very judicious
Speaker 1: and selective with your vocabularies, so you're you know, the
Speaker 1: way you write is almost more thoughtful because it's not
Speaker 1: just like banging out keys on a keyboard or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, that's super interesting. Actually, one question I
Speaker 2: had was why did quills last for such a long time.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously it was cheaper to go pluck birds
Speaker 2: feathers than to make a metal implement, but it feels
Speaker 2: like someone would have produced a fake quill by this point.
Speaker 2: And it turns out the answer has to do with
Speaker 2: the ink itself. So seventeenth century ink was made of
Speaker 2: iron salts and oak galls and gum arabic and it
Speaker 2: made it very acidic, and so when people did try
Speaker 2: to use steel quills, it ate away at these new
Speaker 2: fangled pins they were trying to make. It actually wasn't
Speaker 2: until the mid eighteen hundreds that you get these stronger,
Speaker 2: more acid resistant steel that was being invented at the time,
Speaker 2: and that's when steel pen nibs started being mass produced
Speaker 2: and steel pens overtook the quills.
Speaker 1: That's so crazy, Like you don't even think about the
Speaker 1: way the ink might have affected the mechanics of the pen.
Speaker 1: That's really really amazing. So tell me about fountain pens
Speaker 1: and I'm prettily interested in these, you know we mentioned
Speaker 1: at the top. Also, these were an instrument that made
Speaker 1: no sense to me as a kid. I remember like
Speaker 1: playing with my grandfather's fun pen and either ink would
Speaker 1: get all over the place or it was that scratchy sound,
Speaker 1: which I hated. But I've recently started playing with fun
Speaker 1: pens and I like the experience so much that I've
Speaker 1: been giving them out as gifts. I'm curious, how did
Speaker 1: this pen come to be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the fountain pen is an evolution on the
Speaker 2: dipping your quill and ink method because it has this
Speaker 2: ink reservoir. It has a nib like I mentioned in
Speaker 2: the first reference we have to fountain pins. It's in
Speaker 2: a tenth century manuscript from Arab Egypt. Now in it
Speaker 2: and a mom commissions a pin with ink stored inside
Speaker 2: so he doesn't need to keep dipping his quill. Plus
Speaker 2: he requests that a writer could store it in their
Speaker 2: sleeve without staining their.
Speaker 1: Shirt, which feels like very specific requests.
Speaker 2: Totally, but it took a long time for those problems
Speaker 2: to get worked out. The first practical version of the
Speaker 2: fountain pen wasn't produced until centuries later. This was in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty three, when an American named Lewis Edson Waterman
Speaker 2: patented the modern fountain pin. Waterman had invented a new
Speaker 2: system to move ink smoothly down the pen nib without
Speaker 2: leaking or making blobs all over the paper, and he
Speaker 2: sold his what he called ideal fountain pen from a
Speaker 2: cigar shop in Lower Manhattan, and people loved it, so
Speaker 2: he started advertising it, and eventually he created the Waterman
Speaker 2: Pen Company, which is of course still in business today.
Speaker 1: How is it that Waterman ends up coming up with
Speaker 1: this idea?
Speaker 2: You know, as with many things that were invented some
Speaker 2: time ago, the stories can vary, but if you look
Speaker 2: at the Waterman Pen Company's ads through the nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: here's what they say happened. They say Lewis Waterman was
Speaker 2: an insurance salesman on the brink of closing this big contract,
Speaker 2: and he offered his client a fountain pen to sign
Speaker 2: the contract. But then the pen leaked all over the paper,
Speaker 2: and so Waterman ran out to get another pin. But somehow,
Speaker 2: while he was gone, a rival broker swooped in and
Speaker 2: closed the deal. I just love the imagery of this.
Speaker 2: But according to legend, Waterman decided then and there that
Speaker 2: he would invent a more reliable fountain pin. So he
Speaker 2: started tinkering in his brother's workshop, and the rest is,
Speaker 2: of course history.
Speaker 1: I love this idea of like rivals just lurking in
Speaker 1: the back of d Yeah, ready to go wrong.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like maybe you're a little skeptical about
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you do find this story with slight
Speaker 2: variations in almost every hitory of the fountain pen. But
Speaker 2: I'm sad to say it's most likely not at all true,
Speaker 2: and a vintage pen expert and historian Daniel Kersheimer debunked
Speaker 2: the myth in one of the most enjoyable research papers
Speaker 2: I have ever read. So Kersheimer discovered that the earliest
Speaker 2: mention of the fountain pen creation story comes from nineteen twelve,
Speaker 2: and interestingly, it contains some details that only appear there
Speaker 2: and in no future version of the tale. Like it
Speaker 2: includes Waterman tinkering with a pre existing pin rather than
Speaker 2: making one from scratch in his brother's workshop. Now that clue,
Speaker 2: and that there was a pre existing pen that pointed
Speaker 2: the way to an earlier article from nineteen ten that
Speaker 2: tells an entirely different story. It's about three people in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: You've got Frank Hollind, Aaron Cook, and Aaron's sister Mabel.
Speaker 1: So I don't Jerr Lewis Waterman in that mix.
Speaker 2: He is not part of this story. And it seems
Speaker 2: this guy Holland was talking about how whoever could combine
Speaker 2: the best inc and the best pen to create a
Speaker 2: fountain pen that didn't leak would get rich. So he
Speaker 2: and his friends talked through this idea, and Holland was
Speaker 2: actually a skilled engineer and created this prototype of the
Speaker 2: improved fountain pen the following day after this conversation. Now,
Speaker 2: eventually this group formed the Holland Stylographic Pen Company. The
Speaker 2: founding members applied for and got this patent for their
Speaker 2: fountain pens, but they still had one major issue. After
Speaker 2: writing for a few hours, a giant ink blot would
Speaker 2: flow down.
Speaker 1: That seemed like a problem.
Speaker 2: It's a nightmare.
Speaker 1: So they move on from there.
Speaker 2: Well, eventually the Holland Company made its way to New
Speaker 2: York where they linked up with Waterman, who figured out
Speaker 2: that if you added two indents inside the pen, they
Speaker 2: stopped the blotting issue. I love invention stories like this,
Speaker 2: especially the real ones where like that was such a
Speaker 2: creative way to solve this problem. So Waterman immediately filed
Speaker 2: for his own patent and ended up earning six thousand
Speaker 2: dollars in the first year of his pen sales, which
Speaker 2: would have been a lot of money at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine, so that whole thing about the client
Speaker 1: with the ruined contractors is totally bunk.
Speaker 2: Then, it seems. Unfortunately that's the case, and the story
Speaker 2: was probably just invented by the marketing department after Waterman
Speaker 2: died in nineteen oh one, and over time it kind
Speaker 2: of became the only story that people know.
Speaker 1: Well, people do love inventor hero stories. And I've actually
Speaker 1: got another one that I want to tell, which is true.
Speaker 2: All right, let's hear it.
Speaker 1: So this one's about the ballpoint pen, which has a
Speaker 1: complicated origin as well, and the first one was patented
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty eight by an American named John Loud
Speaker 1: who wanted a pen that would write on a variety
Speaker 1: of materials. Right, so, of course he wanted it to
Speaker 1: be able to write on paper, but also wood and leather.
Speaker 1: He added this rotating steel ball inside his pen to
Speaker 1: control the ink flow, but he never got the paper
Speaker 1: part down, it could only write on those rough surfaces,
Speaker 1: and his patent lapsed before you could improve it. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the nineteen thirties that a Hungarian Argentinian
Speaker 1: inventor made this whole contraption work. He's the one who
Speaker 1: tends to get the credit for inventing the ballpoint pen.
Speaker 1: His name is laslow Biro a bureau.
Speaker 2: I've actually heard that word so in ingland's what they
Speaker 2: call ballpoint pins, right.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. So Iero was a journalist and he
Speaker 1: used fountain pens all the time and knew there had
Speaker 1: to be a better way to write in a blotless,
Speaker 1: mudchless manner. So he realized that adding a ball inside
Speaker 1: a pen was a good start, but really it wasn't
Speaker 1: good enough. He needed a new type of ink, one
Speaker 1: that would dry quicker like newspaper ink. And his brother,
Speaker 1: who was a dentist, and also somehow a knowledgeable chemist,
Speaker 1: decided to help him out.
Speaker 2: So I feel like a lot of times when we're
Speaker 2: telling these stories from history, there's so many multi hyphenates
Speaker 2: in the history stories, Like here we've got an inventor
Speaker 2: slash journalist and a Dennis slash chemist. I don't think
Speaker 2: you see many of those these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I could really do one thing. These
Speaker 1: people ever liked it, like masters of several things. But
Speaker 1: Laslow's brother actually did come through. He creates this fast
Speaker 1: drying with high viscosity and it was kind of a
Speaker 1: bonus like the resulting pen used way less ink than
Speaker 1: fountain pens as a result of this, and Laslow got
Speaker 1: a patent for the pen in nineteen thirty eight. The
Speaker 1: pen was officially released in nineteen forty three, and one
Speaker 1: of his first big customers was the British Royal Air Force,
Speaker 1: who ordered thirty thousand of the pens. Because I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever tried to write with pens an
Speaker 1: airplane or something, but these pens could actually withstand the
Speaker 1: changes in pressure, so they wouldn't sort of spill all
Speaker 1: over the place like fountain pens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Actually, I didn't think about that that fountain pens
Speaker 2: would malfunction in the air. And obviously this was during
Speaker 2: World War Two, so I'm guessing the Air Force was
Speaker 2: crazy busy at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So at the time Laslow was living in South America.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is that besides the Royal Air Force,
Speaker 1: the pen really didn't make that much of a global impact. Eventually,
Speaker 1: after the war, there was this American businessman, his name
Speaker 1: was Milton Reynolds, and he comes across bureaus pens. He
Speaker 1: kind of tweaks the designs to make the ink flow
Speaker 1: by gravity, not a capillary action, and this version of
Speaker 1: the ballpoint becomes huge in the US. In nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: Time magazine reported quote, thousands of people all but trampled
Speaker 1: one another last week to spend twelve dollars of fifty
Speaker 1: cents each for a new style fountain pen, which was
Speaker 1: these ballpoint pens. And within six months, the department store
Speaker 1: Gimbals had made five point six million dollars in ballpoint
Speaker 1: pen sales, which is around eighty one million dollars today.
Speaker 2: Wow, and that's just Gimbals. That is wild. So people
Speaker 2: must have been making a fortune on these things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is that the ballpoint was marketed kind
Speaker 1: of like a fountain pen of the time, right. It
Speaker 1: still need to be refilled every two years, so customers
Speaker 1: bought a lot of refills, but not as many new pens.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's a problem for a company that wants
Speaker 1: to maximize profits. So it was actually a guy named
Speaker 1: Michelle Bick who addressed that issue in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: He was an Italian born French industrialist and he came
Speaker 1: up with idea to make the pens disposable. In fact,
Speaker 1: his obituary read quote he added the magic catalyst of disposability.
Speaker 1: He invented nothing, but understood the mass market almost perfectly.
Speaker 2: He invented nothing at such a great phrase for an obituary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really amazing. But Bick, whose name was spelled Bich,
Speaker 1: was advised by an ad exec to shorten his name
Speaker 1: to Bic. And obviously we all know the bigpen Tony.
Speaker 1: So it's estimated that fifteen million ballpoint pens are sold
Speaker 1: every single day and Bick is the leading manufacturer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's about two million
Speaker 2: in every pack that you buy of those big pins.
Speaker 2: But it's so wild that he basically made it okay
Speaker 2: for us to be more forgetful. Like before Bick, you
Speaker 2: actually had to keep track of these expensive pins. And actually,
Speaker 2: one major drawback to the disposable pin is the environmental impact.
Speaker 2: Because I was thinking about this, I have to admit
Speaker 2: I'm really bad about this if you have a cheap
Speaker 2: pin of somehow misplacing it. And then in the United
Speaker 2: States alone, it's estimated that over one point six billion
Speaker 2: pins are thrown away every single year. That's not to
Speaker 2: mention the impact of pen production, which applies to all pins.
Speaker 2: And you know that's the fancy ones with the gold
Speaker 2: nibs to the cheap disposable ones.
Speaker 1: You know, there are not a lot of things that
Speaker 1: I am proud of or brag about, but holding on
Speaker 1: to pens is one of the few things I am
Speaker 1: really good at.
Speaker 2: There you go, You should brag about that. You should
Speaker 2: use that as a lead whenever you meet everyone, Mango.
Speaker 1: It's at the top of my resume. Hey, but there
Speaker 1: was a kid in elementary school, this kid named Tim,
Speaker 1: and for some reason, his mom was very strict with him,
Speaker 1: and she gave him like seven pencils at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the year or whatever and showed him not to
Speaker 1: lose him. And at the end of the year he
Speaker 1: actually had like four or five of these pencils, and
Speaker 1: I just remember being so impressed, and I kind of
Speaker 1: made it a challenge for myself to like hold on
Speaker 1: to pens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty great.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you have this relationship. But
Speaker 1: the thing I was going to say, get back on track.
Speaker 1: But my grandfather, what are the few like pieces of
Speaker 1: advice he instilled in me was to always carry a
Speaker 1: pen with me. And that's because he was a multi hyphene, right,
Speaker 1: he was a you know, a chemist and an engineer
Speaker 1: and like a writer and all these other things. And
Speaker 1: his point was like, you never know when you're going
Speaker 1: to want to write down a note or an idea.
Speaker 1: It's just useful to have a pen. And it's like
Speaker 1: my dad always carried a pen for the same reason.
Speaker 1: And I still like, I feel like I'm not fully
Speaker 1: dressed if I go out for the world and don't
Speaker 1: have a pen in my pocket.
Speaker 2: I completely agree, I always have a pen in my pocket.
Speaker 2: I may be a different pin because, like I said,
Speaker 2: I'm really bad at keeping up with him, but I
Speaker 2: always managed to find a pen. And apparently you're not
Speaker 2: the only one who values pins, because there's a growing
Speaker 2: community of pen enthusiasts and they're keeping the classic ways alive.
Speaker 2: Fountain pen collecting has become a pretty big thing, and
Speaker 2: for some collectors it's not just about the craftsmanship of
Speaker 2: the pen or the value that they hold, although that's
Speaker 2: of course important, a lot of people just love writing
Speaker 2: with them. In fact, people spend a whopping three hundred
Speaker 2: and forty one million dollars on fountain pens in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. That was a seven percent increase from just
Speaker 2: a few years before that. There are indie fountain pen
Speaker 2: companies popping up, constructing new pins and kind of blending
Speaker 2: these niche inks, and there's some really cool online communities
Speaker 2: where fountain pen enthusiast talk shop, like the Fountain pens
Speaker 2: subreddit which has over three hundred thousand members, and all
Speaker 2: the content on pen talk and Instagram, so like the
Speaker 2: list just goes on. There's a lot of enthusiasm for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. I gotten to fun pens recently because
Speaker 1: my cousin took me to a shop and we just
Speaker 1: started playing, and I really liked Invite. I had no
Speaker 1: idea that this thing was so trendy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a huge thing. So there's this guy,
Speaker 2: Aiden Bernal, and he reviews fountain pens and inks and
Speaker 2: he has more than six hundred thousand subscribers. They're also tutorials,
Speaker 2: reports from pen shows, which are apparently a pretty big thing.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like Comic Con for pins.
Speaker 1: I feel like someone should invite us to the Comic
Speaker 1: Con for pens because it's the type of thing I
Speaker 1: would happily go to.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think there's a decent chance there's
Speaker 2: an overlap between pen enthusiast and some of the listeners
Speaker 2: of Part Time Genius, So keep that in mind. Guys,
Speaker 2: if you're ready, invite Mango to your next pen gathering.
Speaker 2: But apparently these take place all around the world, but
Speaker 2: one place that's become a real hotbed of fountain pen
Speaker 2: collecting is the Philippines. The Manila Pen Show is actually
Speaker 2: the biggest in Southeast Asia, and one of the country's
Speaker 2: most renowned authors, jose Dellaside Junior, has helped spread the
Speaker 2: love of pins through his blog it's called Pinoy Penmen,
Speaker 2: and in twenty eighteen, a company called Kosama created the
Speaker 2: first ever Filipino made fountain pin.
Speaker 1: That's so fascinating. I wonder why fountain pins have caught
Speaker 1: on there, of all places. You know, like many things,
Speaker 1: there's probably a lot of reasons, including a cultural interest
Speaker 1: in handicraft and proximity to pen manufacturers and specialty shops
Speaker 1: in Japan, but also younger Philippine those have gotten into
Speaker 1: the hobby and given this local pen community a boost
Speaker 1: of energy at a time when some European pen communities
Speaker 1: are starting to trend older and older. That's really cool.
Speaker 1: I love that pens are young person's game. Now, that's right.
Speaker 1: But before I go off and dive into this internet
Speaker 1: pen culture, which I'm absolutely gonna do, now, oh, why
Speaker 1: don't we do a little fact off?
Speaker 2: All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1: So we were talking earlier about scribes and scriptners, and
Speaker 1: apparently they used different types of handwriting script depending on
Speaker 1: the purpose. This was true in every society that began
Speaker 1: to privilege literacy over the oral records. So, for example,
Speaker 1: at various times in China, scribes used what's known as
Speaker 1: the seal script for commemorative inscriptions. They also had a
Speaker 1: clerical script for documents and correspondence, a cursive script for
Speaker 1: esthetic appeal, and a semi cursive script known as the
Speaker 1: running script for convenience.
Speaker 2: That we talked about Big being the leading manufacturer of
Speaker 2: ballpoint pins, and since nineteen fifty they have sold over
Speaker 2: one hundred billion ballpoint pens worldwide, and as we know,
Speaker 2: there is no way to really measure the scale of
Speaker 2: something without seeing how many times you can go to
Speaker 2: the moon and back. That's really like our standard measurement
Speaker 2: for big numbers, so we had to look into it.
Speaker 2: That is so many pins that a stack of them
Speaker 2: could go to the moon and back more than three
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty thousand times. Now that makes it a
Speaker 2: lot of pins.
Speaker 1: That is insane. Speaking of the moon, you may have
Speaker 1: heard the story that during the Space Race, NASA spent
Speaker 1: millions trying to figure out how to make a pen
Speaker 1: work in space where there is obviously no gravity. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Soviets at the time just use pencils. Part of
Speaker 1: that is a bit of a myth. NASA actually used
Speaker 1: pencils as well, but in nineteen sixty five they did
Speaker 1: get into hot water with taxpayers for buying thirty four
Speaker 1: mechanical pencils at one hundred and twenty eight dollars and
Speaker 1: eighty nine cents a piece. It was the Fisher Pen
Speaker 1: company that finally developed a pen that could write in space,
Speaker 1: and NASA started using it in nineteen sixty seven for
Speaker 1: a much more reasonable cost of two dollars and thirty
Speaker 1: nine cents per pen. And this was the pen that
Speaker 1: the astronauts on the Apollo eleven mission used to fix
Speaker 1: a broken arming switch, which allowed them to return to Earth.
Speaker 2: Wow, so pens really do save lives. But I'm curious
Speaker 2: how did they use the pen by like doing a
Speaker 2: calculation or something.
Speaker 1: No, apparently a switch broke and they used the pen
Speaker 1: to push in a circuit breaker. Oh okay, I guess
Speaker 1: they could have used a pencil in that case too.
Speaker 1: But obviously pencils are a serious hazard in space, with
Speaker 1: little bits of debris that can fly around the shuttles.
Speaker 1: So like if you think about pencil shavings or little
Speaker 1: pieces of lead that could break off, all of that
Speaker 1: ends up being a hazard for astronauts. But what's funny
Speaker 1: is that the pens were so good at writing in
Speaker 1: microgravity that cosmonauts actually began using them too, So this
Speaker 1: is one technology that we actually shared.
Speaker 2: Huh, that's interesting. All right, Well, if you've ever wondered
Speaker 2: what the ball and the ballpoint pin is made of,
Speaker 2: it's a tungsten carbide pellet. Now to make it its
Speaker 2: ground between plates until it becomes a sphere, and this
Speaker 2: is a process that can take up to sixty hours.
Speaker 2: Sixty hours, it's a long time to do this, but
Speaker 2: that extra effort is worth it. When the ball is complete,
Speaker 2: it's actually as hard as a diamond. You know.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that I almost forget that
Speaker 1: there's a ball in ballpoint pens most of the time.
Speaker 1: But it's also funny that these pens are so disposable
Speaker 1: and yet we're spending sixty hours perfecting the sphere inside them.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. It is so speaking of pen parts, did
Speaker 1: you know there are people known as nidmeisters who repair pendants.
Speaker 2: I did not know this, Mango, and I personally am
Speaker 2: not a nibmeister, but now I have a new goal
Speaker 2: in life.
Speaker 1: So appairly you learn this craft through mentorship and practice.
Speaker 1: And it said that each nymmeister's work has a unique personality.
Speaker 1: You can actually tell people nibs apart.
Speaker 2: God, nib meister. It's like it's a new scrabble word.
Speaker 2: It's also just it feels like something you want to
Speaker 2: call somebody when they've just been amazing, like they're just
Speaker 2: a total nibmeister, you know, Or maybe it's an insult.
Speaker 2: I can't decide. We'll have to work shop it a
Speaker 2: little bit of all right. Well, for a number of decades,
Speaker 2: the government has relied on the exact same pin. It's
Speaker 2: a Black skill Craft ballpoint pin, and according to an
Speaker 2: article in the Washington Post, the specifications for the pen
Speaker 2: come from a nineteen thirty eight mandate. In fact, the
Speaker 2: government had sixteen pages for specifications for their pen, including
Speaker 2: that quote, it must be able to write continuously for
Speaker 2: a mile and in temperatures up to one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty degrees and down to forty degrees below zero. I
Speaker 2: don't know what's happening at those temperatures. But according to
Speaker 2: the article, it's been used in war zones and gas stations.
Speaker 2: It was designed to fit undetected into US military uniforms,
Speaker 2: and according to company lore, the pen can stand in
Speaker 2: for a two inch fuse and comes in handy during
Speaker 2: emergency trade giotomies. The pins are ubiquitous and still used
Speaker 2: in government offices today, and as one government official referred
Speaker 2: to them, they're the Coca Cola of pins.
Speaker 1: Who is the person who has to right in one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty degrees or heard negative forty degrees.
Speaker 2: That's what I want to know. Write this for a mile.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: I really thought I had you with my Nibmeister in fact,
Speaker 1: but I think the government penn story really is hard
Speaker 1: to be So why why don't you take today's trophy.
Speaker 2: I'll take it, but I have to be honest. I
Speaker 2: know we hear from our listeners sometimes when they disagree
Speaker 2: with who wins the trophy. I think this is going
Speaker 2: to be one of those. Nibmeister was pretty good, but
Speaker 2: you're kind to do that. I will accept the trophy. Well,
Speaker 2: that wraps up today's episode from Dylan, Gabe, Mary Mango
Speaker 2: and me. And actually I want to give a shout
Speaker 2: out to Meredith who made some amazing contributions with today's research. Now,
Speaker 2: remember you can always find us on Instagram at part
Speaker 2: Time Genius and if you're someone who posts pictures of
Speaker 2: your fountain pins, please tag it. We'd love to see them.
Speaker 2: Thanks again for listening. We'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongagetikler
Speaker 1: and research by our good pal Mary, Philip Sandy Today's
Speaker 1: episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
Speaker 1: for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social
Speaker 1: media support from Sasha Gay trustee Dara Potts and buy
Speaker 1: Any Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.