# Fountain pen

> A pen that carries its own ink

- Date: c. 1620
- Era: Renaissance
- Domain: [Textiles & Everyday Life](https://lastcodex.org/en/domains/everyday/)
- Rebuild stage: IV (Science & industry)
- Difficulty: 3/5
- URL: https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/fountain-pen/

A fountain pen carries its own ink. A reservoir in the barrel feeds a split metal nib through a feed whose fine channels let ink run down and air come up, so the ink flows while the nib touches the paper and stays put the rest of the time. The oldest known description of how to make such a pen is Daniel Schwenter's, printed in cipher in a Nuremberg handbook of secret writing around 1620.

![Fountain pen · A pen that carries its own ink](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/plate.BpEHvtWS_2hPvYs.webp)

## Legend

1. Steel nib with its slit
2. Feed with fine ink channels
3. Air groove in the feed
4. Barrel holding the ink
5. Threaded joint, opened to fill the barrel

## What it is

A fountain pen is a pen that holds its own supply of [ink](/en/inventions/writing-ink/). Its working parts are a metal nib split at the point, a feed lying under the nib, and a reservoir inside the barrel, with a cap to cover the nib. Ink passes from the reservoir along the feed to the slit of the nib and onto the paper, and it does so only while the pen is writing. A quill or a steel dip pen holds a few words' worth of ink and has to go back to the inkwell again and again.

Fountain pens differ mostly in the way they are filled. The early ones were filled with a dropper after the barrel had been unscrewed. Later pens drew the ink up into a flexible sac squeezed by a lever or a button, or into the barrel itself with a piston worked by a screw.

## How it works

![Seen from above, a steel nib in the dark grip of a pen, its point resting on a scrap of paper: ink fills the slit between the two halves of the nib and runs out at the tip into a fresh stroke](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v3.BByo5Ygv_11HS5h.webp)
_The paper fibres draw ink out of the slit, and more follows behind it._

The slit of the nib is narrow enough for ink to creep along it by capillary action, the pull that draws water into a cloth or a blotter. When the tip touches the paper, the paper fibres draw ink out of the slit, and more ink follows from the feed behind it.

The reservoir is closed at the back. As ink leaves it, the air above the ink would fall in pressure and hold back the rest, unless outside air could get in. The feed that Lewis Waterman patented in 1884 lets it in. A groove runs along the top of the feed, and fine fissures are cut in its floor. Ink runs down through the fissures while bubbles of air climb along the other side of the groove into the barrel to take its place. When the ink starts to flow too fast, more air comes in and evens out the flow.

The closed reservoir matters as much as the feed. Schwenter's pen of 1636 already relied on it: once filled, it was closed with a small cap so that nothing ran out, and pressing the barrel let in air and brought a drop of ink to the nib. In a modern pen the back stays sealed, so the ink can leave only as fast as air enters through the feed, and it stops when the nib leaves the paper and the capillary pull of the fibres ends.

## How to do it

A full fountain pen needs a feed cut to fine tolerances, but the capillary reservoir at its heart can be made in a few minutes for an ordinary dip pen. You need a pointed steel dip nib in a holder, a strip of thin brass shim that bends easily between the fingers, a file, tin snips, ink and paper.

![A wooden pen holder with a pointed slit steel nib; under the nib a thin brass strip, held to the holder by a brass band, lies just below the underside of the nib behind its point, with blue ink held between strip and nib](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v1.CrXDJvyC_g9zu9.webp)
_The ink is held in the narrow gap between the brass strip and the nib and drawn down the slit as the pen writes._

Cut a strip of shim about as wide as the nib and file its edges and corners until they no longer catch on a fingertip. Bend one end round the holder so that it grips firmly, then bend the free end so that it lies along the underside of the nib, almost touching it, a little behind the point. Dip the nib, shake off the excess and write. The ink trapped between strip and nib should feed several lines. If it drips off, close the gap a little; if the reservoir does not fill, open it slightly.

The role of air can be seen with a drinking straw. Dip it into coloured water, close the top end with a finger and lift it out: the water stays in. Lift the finger and the water runs out at once. A fountain pen keeps the top closed and lets air in only through the feed, a little at a time.

Cut shim has sharp edges, so file them before handling the strip and wear gloves while cutting. The point of a dip nib can pierce the skin. Ink stains skin, cloth and wood and must not be swallowed, so keep it and the coloured water away from small children and from food.

## History and evolution

For centuries, writers dipped a reed, a quill and later a steel pen into an inkwell every few words. A tenth-century account by al-Qadi al-Nu'man, chief judge of the Fatimid caliph al-Mu'izz, tells of a gold pen made for the caliph that held its ink and could be carried in a sleeve without staining. Clifford Edmund Bosworth, who translated the passage in 1981, presented it as a possible prototype of the fountain pen, but the account does not say how the pen worked.

![A goose quill with its feathers, its barrel built of short pieces of quill pushed one into another, and beside it a separate short quill tube with a small pierced piece of quill inside it, ending in a cut and slit nib](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v2.xtEqfgJ7_1usL7y.webp)
_Schwenter's reservoir quill after his woodcut of 1636: pieces cut from seven quills fitted into one another._

The oldest known description of how to make such a pen comes from Daniel Schwenter, professor of mathematics and oriental languages at Altdorf, near Nuremberg. In a handbook of secret writing that he published in Nuremberg under a pseudonym, he announced a pen that held ink, so that a whole sheet or more could be written without dipping, and gave the method in cipher. The Bavarian State Library dates this edition to about 1620, while the historian Eveline Szarka argues for 1617. According to Gerhard Strasser, who studied the enciphered passage, a small metal tube with a tiny hole was set into the lower part of a quill to meter the ink stored above it.

Schwenter's collection of mathematical and natural curiosities, the _Deliciae physico-mathematicae_, printed in Nuremberg in 1636, the year of his death, gave another version with a woodcut. Pieces cut from seven quills were fitted into one another, and one inner piece had a hole just large enough for a millet seed to fall through. The user dipped the nib end in ink and sucked at the top until the pen filled, then put a small cap back on so that nothing ran out. Pressing the barrel let in air and brought a drop of ink to the nib. Schwenter recommended it to students and land surveyors.

In the early eighteenth century, the Paris instrument maker Nicolas Bion described an "endless pen" about five inches long, made of tubes of brass, silver or other metals. A cut and slit quill was screwed into the middle piece and protected by a screw cover. Ink was poured in at the other end through a small funnel, and that end was then closed by a cover holding a [pencil](/en/inventions/pencil/) holder. Bion warned that if this end was left open, the pressure of the air drove all the ink out at once.

Petrache Poenaru, a Romanian student in Paris, obtained a French patent on 25 May 1827 for a portable pen that fed itself with ink, but it was never made in series. Steel nibs became a trade in Birmingham between 1825 and 1830, when local makers began to stamp them with presses and dies. In 1884 Lewis Waterman, a New York insurance agent, patented his feed with a groove and fissures, which let air into the reservoir as the ink ran out, and began making pens by hand in New York. Filling became easier in turn. Walter Sheaffer, a jeweller in Iowa, patented in 1908 a lever that squeezed an ink sac inside the barrel, and later pens added buttons and pistons for the same purpose.

## Key facts

- Oldest known description of how to make one: Daniel Schwenter, Nuremberg, about 1620, in cipher
- Schwenter's woodcut of a reservoir quill: Deliciae physico-mathematicae, Nuremberg, 1636
- Feed with an air groove: Lewis Waterman, US patent of 12 February 1884
- Lever filling: Walter Sheaffer, US patent of 1908

## Requires

- [Writing ink](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/writing-ink/): Colour carried onto a surface (c. 3,300 BCE)
- [Steel](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/steel/): Iron with just enough carbon (c. 1,000 BCE)

## Sources

- [Daniel Schwenter (as Resene Gibronte Runeclus Hanedi), Steganologia & Steganographia Nova (Nuremberg, Halbmayer, [ca. 1620]), Res/Path. 801#Beibd.4: announcement of a pen that holds ink, method in cipher](https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10926734), Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum
- [From the first "fountain pen" to ball point pens: writing instruments from and for medical doctors (XXIII ICHST, Budapest 2009, book of abstracts, p. 393)](https://www.conferences.hu/ichs09/ICHST09_book_of_abstracts_author_index.pdf), Gerhard F. Strasser, Penn State University
- [On the Combination of Cryptography and Steganography in 17th Century Germany (HistoCrypt 2023, published 30 May 2023), note 6 on the date of the Steganologia nova](https://ecp.ep.liu.se/index.php/histocrypt/article/view/705), Eveline Szarka, Linköping University Electronic Press
- [Daniel Schwenter, Deliciae physico-mathematicae (Nuremberg, 1636), part XIV, problem 52, pp. 519–520, with woodcut](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_VPpo4iHNbJ8C), Internet Archive (Google Books scan)
- [Daniel Schwenter, Deliciae physico-mathematicae (Nuremberg, 1677 edition), pp. 519–520](https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/schwenter1677bd1/0536), Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
- [A Mediaeval Islamic Prototype of the Fountain Pen?](https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/26.2.229), C. E. Bosworth, Journal of Semitic Studies 26, no. 2 (1981), pp. 229–234
- [The Fountain Pen and its Fatimid Origins (English translation of al-Qadi al-Nu'man's account, after Bosworth)](https://simerg.com/literary-readings/the-fountain-pen-and-its-fatimid-origins/), Simerg (2011)
- [Al-Nu'man, al-Qadi (d. 363 AH/974 CE)](https://iis.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/al-qadi-al-nu-man-farhad-daftary-01-12-10_final-344611624.pdf), Farhad Daftary, The Institute of Ismaili Studies
- [Nicolas Bion, Traité de la construction et des principaux usages des instrumens de mathematique (Paris, 1709)](https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/geometry/cat32.html), Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, The Geometry of War, catalogue no. 32
- [Nicolas Bion, Traité de la construction et des principaux usages des instrumens de mathématique (1723 edition): Construction de la plume sans fin](https://archive.org/details/b30531755), Internet Archive (scan)
- [Nicolas Bion, The Construction and Principal Uses of Mathematical Instruments, translated by Edmund Stone (1723): Of the Fountain-Pen](https://archive.org/details/constructionprin00bion), Internet Archive (scan)
- [Petrache Poenaru 1799–1875](https://www.agir.ro/univers-ingineresc/numar-2-2005/petrache-poenaru-1799---1875_983.html), Mihai Olteneanu, Univers ingineresc no. 2/2005, AGIR
- [Petrache Poenaru, care a brevetat „condeiul portăreț”, precursorul stiloului](https://www.stiripesurse.ro/petrache-poenaru-care-a-brevetat-condeiul-portaret-precursorul-stiloului_1468224.html), Maria Stan, Știri pe surse (after Mediafax), 2020
- [The Steel Pen Trade (from Robert K. Dent, The Making of Birmingham, 1894)](https://victorianweb.org/places/cities/birmingham/industry1.html), The Victorian Web
- [US 293,545, Fountain-pen, Lewis E. Waterman, 12 February 1884](https://patents.google.com/patent/US293545A), United States Patent Office (Google Patents)
- [The Waterman Pen](https://www.americanheritage.com/waterman-pen), Joseph Bourque, American Heritage 43, no. 4 (1992)
- [Fountain Pen (How Products Are Made)](https://www.encyclopedia.com/manufacturing/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/fountain-pen), Gale / Encyclopedia.com
- [US 896,861, Fountain-pen, Walter A. Sheaffer, 25 August 1908](https://patents.google.com/patent/US896861A/en), United States Patent Office (Google Patents)
- [Iowan Writes His Way Into History: The Sheaffer Pen Story](https://iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/2704/iowan-writes-his-way-history-sheaffer-pen-story), Iowa PBS, Iowa Pathways

Fact-checked on 2026-10-18.

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