The history of my means of writing is as follows ~ subject to my memory being good enough.
Infants school up to age 7: Slate pencil on a slate. The slate was set in a wooden frame. Later on the slate pencil was superseded by chalk.
Junior school up age 11: Pen consisting of a nib held in a steel tube which was attached to a wooden holder. The pen was dipped into an inkwell situated at the top of the desk at school. In the early years at that school the inkwells were refilled by the teacher, but later on one of the older pupils took over the task. They were given the title of "Ink Monitor". By the age of 11 I had a fountain pen which had a rubber sac inside which was filled by means of a lever on the side of the pen.
Secondary school age 11 onwards: The early fountain pen was superseded by one which was filled by turning a knob at the end. I was given a ballpoint pen as a present but wasn't allowed to use it at school. It was one of the first ballpoint pens available and was made by the Biro company. It was a genuine biro.
University: I seem to remember we started off using fountain pens, and may have made the change to ballpoint pens later in the course. By that time fountain pens had an ink cartridge.
What was your history?
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slate/pencil - paper/pencil - fountain pen - ball point pen - keyboard - touchscreen - voice to text (near future)
:o)
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Exactly the same as L'es, except that I never liked the cartridge fountain pen. I went straight from the lever in the side kind to biros in about 1975.
It was the introduction of Snopake that brought it about in my case. The firm I worked for liked Snopake, and of course you can't write over it in real ink.
My favourite colour was Watermans Royal Blue.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Mon 11 Oct 10 at 10:29
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Can't write for brown stuff. Hand writing is attrocious. Grasp of the English language has been allowed to languish and brought down to common denominator American English standard. As with all these things i'm a product of my environment, strong information technology influences in my life.
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Prep school up to age of approx 8, pencil on paper.
Thereafter, fountain pen (filled from bottle). I have one in by my keyboard as I type this - and I have a sharpened pencil too.
Cannot write with ballpoint pens, they slide all over the place.
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Strange how you get out of the habit of writing long-hand. Used to write pages and pages of foolscap reports back in the seventies and eighties. Now hardly ever write more than than postcard. When I do its surprising how physicially demanding the process is
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>> Strange how you get out of the habit of writing long-hand. Used to write pages
>> and pages of foolscap reports back in the seventies and eighties. Now hardly ever write
>> more than than postcard. When I do its surprising how physicially demanding the process is
>>
Very true! I did a project management exam a few years back, wrote about about a dozen pages of A4 longhand, quite a shock after years of word processing.
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Pencil -> Berol "Handwriting Pen" -> Ballpoint -> Parker el-cheapo fountain pen -> Cross fountain pen -> Ballpoint.
I only write numbers down nowadays anyway.
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School memories coming back:
Flicking ink pellets with a ruler.
A master who was a crack shot with a piece of chalk.
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Pencil/biro/ink pen/biro/keyboard/ink pen.....when trying to impress :(
Jim
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I used to have quite neat writing as a child but the nerve endings in my hands were just about destroyed as a young adult ( long story ) so I don't have a great sense of touch any more. Resultantly I struggle a bit with "slippery" writing instruments such as ball point pens or rollerball pens. I have to use them sometimes of course but have to concentrate hard to write clearly and without the pen running away across the paper.
Given the choice I much prefer to write with a pencil or fountain pen which sort of grip the paper.
As for my writing history, I too started with a slate and moved on to paper and pencil. straight to a !"biro" and never really got fond of ink pens until I needed to. My favourite writing tool is a really quite old Sheaffer mock tortoiseshell fountain pen in which I tend to use blue/black or black cartridges.
On a keyboard I'm fairly quick but with an odd style using only my index fingers and thumbs on both hands and my little finger on my right hand. Thumbs for Ctrl, Space etc my little finger for Enter, Delete or Backspace and my index fingers for everything else.
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"but the nerve endings in my hands were just about destroyed as a young adult"
and I always thought it made you go blind...
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Primary school inkwells and school pens (wooden pen shafts?), don't remember slate and pencils but may have used.
Senior school inkwells continued but were phased out though still used those same old desks, and we then used our own fountain pens, i preferred inkpot to cartridge and still do.
Writing was never good but it now resembles the tracks of an inky spider.
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>> Strange how you get out of the habit of writing long-hand. Used to write pages
>> and pages of foolscap reports back in the seventies and eighties. Now hardly ever write
>> more than than postcard. When I do its surprising how physicially demanding the process is
>>
I used to get compliments on how neat my writing was at school, and when I began an engineering apprenticeship I spent the first year in the drawing office with a draughtsman who was a stickler for British Standards. He taught me to print words and figures like they came off a typewriter so there was no ambiguity as to their meaning on a drawing. I am ashamed to say that since the advent of the pc my handwriting has got so bad through sheer neglect that I sometimes have trouble deciphering any notes I leave to myself, and I agree entirely about how physically demanding it is once you get out of the habit.
I went through the same progression as Les in the OP, btw.
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Infants school - pencil in an exercise book.
Primary/Junior school = Wooden/Metal pen dipped in inkwell on the desk (just like the OP).
Grammar school = Fountain pen, then cartidge pen for the first few years. Then we were allowed to use felt tip pens (Remember the "Tempo" pen?). By sixth-form we were allowed biros.
Continued with biros through university and my first job as a computer programmer. Then we all adopted the craze for "replay" pens which wrote with ink that you could erase with a special eraser built in to the non-writing end of the pen.
Shortly afterwards, keyboards came in as the writing tool of computer people. Hardly use anything to write in long-hand these days.
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Pencil-ballpoint-cartridge-ballpoint-rollerball
Can't write for toffee, mind you. Only certain people can interpret my squiggles, and often that doesn't include me!
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To divert, rather than derail the thread;
I'm left handed, and my writing is Not Very Clear. Many was the time the headmaster used be in paroxysms of mirth at the shape of my Ys (also, as the OP, using nibs dipped in inkwells).
Anyway, when I got into my forties I thought was bored with having the writing of an infant crab, so had a go at writing with my right hand just as a challenge. Obviously it was rubbish, but a little perseverance and within just two weeks I could do it.
Now I can use either hand, my right handed writing is neater than my left, and I have a choice of two natural signatures.
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...I'm left handed, and my writing is Not Very Clear...
Have you tried a left-handed pen?
And no, I'm not being flippant:
tinyurl.com/27edze5
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I did try one of those, but didn't get on with it. Strangely most other activities I do right handed (golf, cricket, tennis, whatever), but I simply cannot use right handed scissors.
A right old mix up.
Edit: - some of those new fangled pens look quite good. I might have another go with one. Thanks iffy.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 12 Oct 10 at 09:58
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I'm another left hander, and writing with wet ink was a nightmare as your hand follows the pen and smudges what you have just written unless you contort your hand so you are virtually writing upside down.
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'Many was the time the headmaster used be in paroxysms of mirth at the shape of my Ys ........'
Just be thankful it wasn't the shape of your R's Crankcase.....
Anyway, I do not recall using a slate but well remember the junior school teacher who was really into calligraphy and who taught us italic writing with broad nibbed pens and brushes.
I also remember the grammar school ink wells with scratch nibbed pens on my first day .
One boy in the class was deputed to collect the ink from the store room. Carrying it downstairs in its stone jar he tripped and fell covering himself and his brand new expensive school uniform.
The predictable outcome was his nickname for ever after at school
......where are you now 40 + years on Inky ?
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Primary school - pencil in exercise book, crayon if I couldn't find a pencil
Prep school - just missed the wooden pen + inkwell in desk era and went straight to fountain pen. I had an Osmiroid and hankered after a Parker like my richer chums. Learned copperplate in a book with lines and curly letters to copy.
Public school - Parker fountain pen at last. Ball-points were banned. Masters marked our work with red-inked fountain pens. The French master had a green-inked fountain pen for corrections.
College - tried ball-points but too thin to hold properly and needed too much pressure; stuck with the fountain pen.
Work - the last thing you need on the shop floor of a chemical plant is a damn fountain pen. Ball-point.
Sales - Fountain pen for meeting notes; I am a minor curiosity; proposals, specs and system designs typed up on Perfect Software or Word.
Captain of industry - still using fountain pen or roller-ball with cap. By this time my hitherto lovely copperplate is only legible by me. My scrawled notes expanded and typed in Word or Works.
Now - pencil behind the ear for gardening quotes, fat ball-point in pocket for swimming notes. Letters, form and cheque signing, greetings cards, swimming reports written with late mum's posey gold Sheaffer fountain pen; everything else typed on Word. My schoolboy Parker is in my desk draw, sulking.
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School was pencil/crayon and a very 1970s aerodynamic ball-point. Never got on with fountain pens but battled valiantly with various Platignums and Parkers (rubber sac, lever filling, and cartridge) but being a southpaw they seemed to fight me. Rollerballs in work for a while then ball-points (I know !) rarely write at all these days other than by keyboard.
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If you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with, this thread made me look up how ink was made, obviously, and I came across this rather wonderful site for the curious amongst us.
It explains just that, and all sorts of other items too, including that can of goo you squirt into a flat tyre.
pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff.html
It's ok. I know I'm the only one who's interested.
Off to renew my subscription to Look and Learn now.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 12 Oct 10 at 13:35
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History of your means of writing - movilogo
