General Chat

Inventions of the devil!
They blooped and blotted all over your schoolwork. The rubber reservoir perished and flooded everything in your bag with Royal Blue - including your lunch.
My first job included writing receipts in triplicate - and a nib just would not handle it, and pencil could be altered so I don't know what we used. The duplicates were sent off to HO for punching on the Powers Samas machine. If you remember them, you're an old fogey like me.
B

Hi Karen
Your last paragraph mirrors my own sentiments also -
I wish I had kept better track of my own first pen now - it was a Conway Stewart Dinki, and I recall as I grew, I had to keep the lid attached to the wrong end to elongate it.
:-)

Hi MowtownGal
I'm glad this post had the effect of taking you down Memory Lane - and to be honest your descriptive powers took me down the same path! I could almost see the hands handling the tissue paper... wonderful !!

Gwyn...
Those were the days, weren't they? Did you carry on with the italics, I wonder.. such a lovely script!

Kay...
The bottles are far nicer - and you can smell the ink when you first open it. I didn't realise that the nibs were actually gold at the time - I was reminded of the fact just a short while before your reply, when I looked at the Conway Stewart home page - my interest has been resurrected!!

Dermot.....
You are so correct! - But I, for one, like the thought of white gloves and careful handling. It is very convenient to have information at the tip of our fingers - and it is becoming a necessity in our fast paced environment.......
But, yes! what is nicer than to receive a hand written envelope - the thrill of knowing who has written, the speculation of the content!
To find an old photograph, carefully printed with names and dates!
For example, I find it extremely poignant, looking at the shaky signatures on some of the early certificates - imagining the effort made, maybe in days of real hardship, to even be able to have had the possibility to learn at all.

I use one.
It's the same Parker which my cousin sent to me for my 21st - rather a lot of years ago!!.
My handwriting is much better with a fountain pen, so I use it for letters (not so many these days) greetings cards, signing forms/documents/cheques etc.
I use a biro for scribbling notes, shopping lists and such, but lately I've taken to using a pencil. Quaint! But my handwriting seems better with a pencil than with a biro!

I agree Dermot, a handwritten note or letter is more personal than a typewritten or text message, somehow relaying the mood and character of the writer to the reader. And after all, aren't diaries, letters and notes the very treasure that we, as genealogists, savour whilst we carefully preserve and save them, feeling so very grateful that our ancestors used the written word? :-)

Letters and the written word have played such an important part in history – ours and the world’s – but what will we leave for historians of the future to work on by way of contemporaneous evidence from great events?

Those days spent combing the National Archives for words written by history-makers themselves will give way to the soulless thoughts of a text message; no need for white gloves or careful handling when it’s just a download from a website in cyberspace.

Of course, the Net makes it all the more accessible but is that really the point? Even now and in a more personal context, wouldn’t you prefer a hand-written note or letter to a mere text or email? Aren’t words from a pen more interesting that those typed with one finger - as I do here right now?

Yes I use one,,,,,and have several,you can still buy the bottled Parker Quink ink in various colours.much better than cartridge refills.---Mind the nibs are expensive to replace,but you can pick old pens up at antique fairs or often carboots,then you can use the nib as most old Parker nibs are 14 ct gold.

In primary school we gradually progressed from pencil to dip-in pen, but only when teachers thought we would be sufficiently careful.
Ink monitors were responsible for filling our inkwells and I think they may have helped to mix the ink from a powder. Towards the end of term this mixture always got a bit weaker and the ink paler, as it had to last until the holidays.
( I've seen a few too many PRs where the vicar was too thrifty too )

We wrote in a cursive style, with many loops and were never allowed to leave empty lines at the bottom of a page. They had to be filled with a row of letters to form a pattern
eg. mmmmm ...0r ...uuuuuuu...or...cccccc.....etc.

In secondary school we had handwriting lessons and were expected to write an Itallic style. I think we could buy special Itallic nibs for our pens. I had an Osmiroid for school, bottle green if I recall correctly.
I do think fountain pens help with better formed writing, but I haven't used one for ages.
Perhaps I'll restart.......

Gwyn

My Dad took me to the Stationers to buy me my first pen, a green marbled Conway Stewart.

I was enchanted by the shop. No longer there, sadly.

It was a family run business. A man, his wife and his sister. They were all elderly [to me anyway].

It was an oak pannelled shop. With a huge glass counter, and an old fashioned till.

Behind the counter was drawers that each held its own delights. Only one of each item was on show, then the owners went to a drawer to serve you what you wanted. Paper was sold in single sheets, from a great chest in the corner of the shop, it was truly wonderful.

For years I went there for books, inks, paints, you name it, you could get it there.

And the patience of these three lovely people, even a two-penny rubber was wrapped lovelingly in tissue paper!

Thanks for this thread, I have not thought about this shop for a long, long time. But it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

<3

Hi Ann...
I'm lefthanded too! I don't know if there was a left-handed shop all those years ago but I compensated by sloping my pen somehow. I know my teachers were surprised that my writing leaned slightly to the right. :-)

I use one still, mainly for cards and the odd letter - opting for the 'quicky' pens for shopping lists etc., but somehow my writing is better when using the fountain pen.
Perhaps its because we take our time a little more? Mistakes were hard to put right when using ink. How many of you tried, at school, by rubbing with your finger and ended up with little paper worms... leading to a gaping hole?
:-0

remember my Dad made me a desk foir Christmas one year - it had inkwells with red ink in one and purple in the other - Quink ink

Had my first biro when my Dad came home from sea - he bought it in Galveston

I have a lovely gold Messenger fountain pen right in front of me as I type - won it in a national letter writing competition in the Good Housekeeping magaizine many moons ago

in school we used ink and unscrupulopus little boys used to dip the ends of plaits of the girl sitting in front of them into ink wells - what a mess :-D :-D :-D

OH was lefthanded and used to get left handed nibs from the "Everything left handed" shop in Beak Street in London

My OH has kept a diary for past 53 yrs and always writes with a Fountain Pen.

Carol

I still use one occasionally.

My first pen was a green marbled Conway Stewart dinky. My second and final fountain pen which I have here in front of me (but not been used for years) is a small Parker, almost as small as the C S Dinky I have had it since the late 50s I am sure.

I use one.

Yes, Andysmum, you reminded me of my 'Osmiroid' pen I had at school. It was a marble effect emerald green.

OH used to sign demands at work with a posh dark maroon fountain pen before he retired a few years ago.

Hi Wisechild... I bought some a couple of years back - I was trying my hand at caligraphy.
When I was at school it was the 'in' thing to have a bottle of Turquiose colour.
:-)

Yes Graham, I know lots of people who went home with blotches on there shirts - girls included!!
AndysMum... Thanks for reminding me of the name of my first 'own' pen ... mine was like a red marbled colour. My next was a Schaeffer - light green.
I used to love pens and going to the stationers - spent lots of time 'just looking'

:-)

Even supposing you wanted to use a fountain pen, can you still buy ink?
I well remember being in trouble at school for favouring black or violet. Ordinary blue was far too common.
Even now I use a black ballpoint rather than a blue one.

Yes, I remember pages and pages of individual letters....they had to be uniform in width, length etc., In fact to start with we had to use 2 spaces and 3 lines to help.

... To diversify slightly.... does anyone remember 'silent reading' being part of the curriculum? how on earth did they mark us on that one? :-S