Age of the ‘PEN’ :
“Reed” was the first real “pen” (c 3000 BC) and the first inks contained
a gelatin derived from boiled donkey skin, which gave the ink its
viscosity - but also a very unpleasant odor that had to be perfumed
with musk oil. Around the 6th century BC and for more than a thousand
years thereon, the quill reigned as the standard writing instrument for
people of many civilizations. Swans, turkeys, and geese’s large wing
feather made the best quill pens. Archaeologists discovered bronze pen
points embedded in the ruins of Pompeii but not until the late 1700s
were stell-point pens used. A century later, fountain pens were
developed - the name chosen because the ink of these pens flowed
continuously, like water in a fountain. L.E. Waterman, a New York
stationer, devised the practical ink reservoir system. Lazlo Biro
relied on improved methods for grinding ball bearings for machines and
weapons and produced the first ball-point pens suitable for writing on
paper around 1944. The Pentel, introduced by Tokyo’s Stationery
Company, was the world’s first felt-tip pen, c 1960.
Library
The word derives from the Latin liber “book.” One of the first libraries discovered was a temple in the Babylonian town of Nippur, from around the first half of the 3rd millennium BC; the temple had a number of rooms filled with clay tablets, suggesting a well-stocked archive or library. We have now moved beyond the “hard copy” tradition to refer to the vast collections of information from the Internet, cable television, etc. as “virtual” or “digital” libraries.
