[HE STORY OF 
 THE INVENTION 
 AND MANUFACTURE 
 
 FEEL PENS 
 
 O 
 C\J 
 
 WSON.BLAKEMAN 5k CCt 
 NEV YORK -CHICAGO 
 
 CM 
 
 03 
 
LI BR ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received 
 Accessions No. 
 
 . 
 

THE STORY 
 
 OF THE INVENTION 
 
 OF STEEL PENS 
 
 WITH A DESCRIPTION OF 
 
 THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES BY 
 WHICH THEY ARE PRODUCED 
 
 BY HENRY BORE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 IVISON, BLAKEMAN & COMPANY 
 
 NOS. 753-755 BROADWAY 
 1890 
 
THE STORY OF THE 
 INVENTION OF STEEL PENS 
 
 [N these days of Public Schools and extended fa- 
 cilities for popular education it would be difficult 
 to find many people unaccustomed to the use of 
 steel pens, but although the manufacture of this 
 article by presses and tools must have been introduced 
 during the first quarter of the present century, the in- 
 quirer after knowledge would scarcely find a dozen per- 
 sons who could give any definite information as to when, 
 where, and by whom this invention was made. Less 
 than two decades ago there were three men living who 
 could have answered this question, but two of them 
 passed away without making any sign, and the third 
 Sir Josiah Mason has left on record that his friend 
 and patron Mr. Samuel Harrison about the year 
 1780, made a steel pen for Dr. Priestley. 
 
 This interesting fact does not contribute anything to- 
 ward solving the question, Who was the first manu- 
 facturer of steel pens by mechanical appliances ? In the 
 absence of any definite information, the balance of testi- 
 mony tends to prove that steel pens were first made by 
 tools, worked by a screw press, about the beginning of 
 the third decade of the present century, and the names 
 associated with their manufacture were John Mitchell, 
 
THE STOR Y OF THE 
 
 Joseph Gillott, and Josiah Mason, each, in his own way, 
 doing something toward perfecting the manufacture by 
 mechanical means. 
 
 The earliest references to pens are probably those in 
 the Bible, and are to be found in Judges v. 14, ist Kings 
 xxi. 8, Job xix. 24, Psalm xlv. i, Isaiah viii. i, Jeremiah 
 viii. 8 and xvii. i. But these chiefly refer to the iron 
 stylus, though the first in Jeremiah taken in reference 
 to the mention of a penknife, xxxvi. 23 would seem to 
 imply that a reed was in use at that period. 
 
 There is a reference to " pen and ink " in the 3d 
 Epistle of John xiii. 5, which was written about A. D. 85, 
 and as pens made in brass and silver were used in the 
 Greek and Roman Empires at that time, it is probable 
 that a metallic pen or reed was alluded to. 
 
 Pens and reeds made in the precious metals and 
 bronze appear to have been in use at the commence- 
 ment of the present era. The following are a few not- 
 able instances : 
 
 ' ' The Queen of Hungary, in the year 1 540, had a silver pen be- 
 stowed upon her, which had this inscription upon it : 'Publii Ovidii 
 Calamus,' found under the ruins of some monument in that country, 
 as Mr. Sands, in the Life of Ovid (prefixed to his Metamorphosis) 
 relates." Humane Industry ; or, a History of Mechanical Arts, by 
 Thos. Powell, D.D,: London, 1661, page 61. 
 
 This was probably a silver reed, and, from the locality 
 in which it was found, was once the property of the poet 
 Ovid. Publius Ovidius Naso was born in the year 43 B. C., 
 and died 18 A. D. He was exiled at the age of 30 to Tomi, 
 a town south of the delta of the Danube. This at present 
 is in modern Bulgaria, but at the period mentioned was 
 in the ancient kingdom of Hungary. 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 
 
 From " Notes and Queries," in Birmingham Weekly 
 Post, we take the following : 
 
 "EARLY METALLIC PENS. Metallic pens are generally supposed 
 to have been unknown before the early part of the last century, when 
 gold and silver pens are occasionally referred to as novel luxuries. I 
 have, however, recently found a description and an engraving of one 
 found in excavating Pompeii, and which is now preserved in the Mu- 
 seum at Naples. It is described in the quarto volume ' Les Monu- 
 ments du Musee National de Naples, graves sur cuivre par les meillures 
 artistes Italienes. Texte par Domenico Monaco, Conservateur du 
 meme Musee, Naples, 1882,' and is in the Catalogue : 
 
 " ' Plate 126 (v) Plume en bronze, taillee parfaitement a la faon de 
 nos plumes 0.13 cent. 
 
 " ' Plate 126 (y) Plume en roseau [reed] trouvee pres d'un papyrus a 
 Herculaneum.' 
 
 " The former (v) is engraved to look like an ordinary reed pen, as 
 now used universally in the East ; and the other (y) has a spear shape, 
 or almond shape (like many modern metallic pens), but with a sort of 
 fillet or ring on the stem, which indicates that the ' y ' example is not a 
 'reed,' but a metallic stylus, or pen, while the 'v' example is shown 
 clearly as a ' reed.' The two are, however, certainly older than A. D. 
 79, when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by the eruption of 
 Vesuvius." 
 
 According to Father Montfaucon, the patriarchs of 
 Constantinople, under the Greek Empire, were accus- 
 tomed to sign their allocutions with tubular pens of 
 silver, similar in shape to the reed pens which are still 
 used by Oriental nations. 
 
 The following are translated from the French " Notes 
 and Queries " L? Inter medlar e : 
 
 "A METALLIC PEN IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. M. Reni de 
 Bellwal, in a very learned volume which he has published recently, on 
 the first campaign of Edward III. in France, says (p. 95) with respect 
 to the fictitious pieces (documents) fabricated by Robert d'Artois, that a 
 clerk of Jeanne wrote the deeds, and made use of a bronze pen to enable 
 
THE STORY OF THE 
 
 him the better to disguise his writing. This plainly refers to a pen, 
 and not to a stylus. Is there any record of the use of metallic pens at 
 any period anterior to the fourteenth century ? It is very satisfactory, 
 however, to establish (as the French used to say) l les preuves de jjoo.'" 
 L? Intermediare. 
 
 " In the Vieux-Neuf of M. Ed. Fournier (vol. ii., p. 22, note) there 
 is mentioned according to the documents used in the prosecution of 
 Robert d' Artois, which are in the Archives ' the bronze pen ' with 
 which the forgers in the pay of the count wrote the false papers which 
 he required. M. Fournier also quotes from ' Montfaucon ' ' the silver 
 reeds' with which the Constantinople patriarchs used to write their 
 letters." CUTHBERT, L ' Intermddiare ', ist June, 1864. 
 
 " METALLIC PENS (XV., 68). Writing was done in the Middle 
 Ages sometimes with a metal stylus, or perhaps with a metal pen ; with 
 the former on wax, and with the pen on parchment or vellum. ' At Trin- 
 ity College, Cambridge, is a manuscript illustration of Eadwine, a monk 
 of Canterbury, and at the end the writer is represented with a metal pen 
 in his hand.' (See Bibliomania in the Middle Ages, p. 103). I have 
 in my possession a metal pen of Dutch manufacture, dating certainly 
 from the year 1717, mounted on the same pencilholder, with a piece of 
 solid plumbago, in a memorandum book of the same year." SAM: 
 TIMMINS. 
 
 " Mr. Le Chauvine Gal, Prior of the collegiate of St. Peter and St. 
 Bars at Aosta, had in his collection of Roman antiquities a bronze pen, 
 slit, found in a tomb, among a number of lamps and lachrymatory 
 vases. M. Aubert has given a drawing and description of it in a work 
 on Aosta. It was subsequently stolen from him by a collector." 
 CHAMBERY, Un Savoyard, L'lnternittdiare ; 25th May, 1868. 
 
 " METALLIC PENS. In a precious volume (an account of the books 
 of the Decretalia) preserved in the library of Saint Antoine, of Padua, the 
 following notice is to be found at the bottom of the last page : ' This 
 work is fashioned and by diligence finished for the service of God, not 
 with ink of quill nor with brazen reed, but with a certain invention of 
 printing or reproducing by John Fust, citizen of Mayence, and Peter 
 Schoeiffer, of Gernsheim, Dec. I7th, 1465, A. D.' Here, then, we 
 have a document proving the existence of metallic pens in the Middle 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS, 
 
 Ages. But has any such pen come down to us ? If so, could a de- 
 tailed description of it be obtained ? On the other hand, I am curious 
 to know if it is possible that platinum was used in the eighteenth cent- 
 ury in the manufacture of pens, or whether it is necessary to attribute 
 a peculiar meaning to the ' platinum pen ' in the following passage of 
 the system of shorthand by Bertin (edit, of the year iv., p. 93) (1793). 
 ' Those of steel and platinum are most convenient ; these latter have 
 the advantage of all others, in that they hold the ink a long time, and 
 run over the paper easily, and are not liable to corrosion by any simple 
 acid.' I am ignorant of what the same author means when he men- 
 tions the endless pen, which ' would certainly be the best.' " J. CAMUS, 
 L' Interm^diare . 
 
 ' ' Metallic pens were used before the fifteenth century ; they were in 
 use at the court of Augustus." See L'Intermed. (I. 69, 94, 141 ; II. 
 319.) Consult also Le Vieux-Neuf Ed. Fournier. A. D. 
 
 The following extracts show there have been several 
 claimants, on the Continent, who profess to have invented 
 metallic pens, made from steel, in the early part of the 
 eighteenth century ; but the reader had better suspend 
 his judgment until he has read the notes that follow 
 them : 
 
 "A manuscript, entitled 'Historical Chronicle of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 second book, 1748,' places on record the claims of Johann Janssen, a 
 magistrate of that place, as the inventor of steel pens. ' Just at the 
 meeting of the congress [after the Austrian war] I may without boast- 
 ing, claim the honour of having invented a new pen. It is, perhaps, 
 not an accident that God should have inspired me at the present time 
 with the idea of making steel pens, for all the envoys here assembled 
 have bought the first that have been made ; therewith, as may be hoped, 
 to sign a treaty of peace, which, with God's blessing, shall be as per- 
 manent as the hard steel with which it is written. Of these pens, as I 
 have invented them, no man hath before seen or heard. If kept clean 
 and free from rust and ink, they will continue fit for use for many 
 years. Indeed, a man may write twenty reams of paper with one, and 
 the last line would be written as well as the first. They are now sent 
 
THE STORY OF THE 
 
 into every corner of the world as a rare thing to Spain, France, Eng- 
 land and Holland. Others will no doubt make imitations of my pens, 
 but I am the man who first invented and made them. I have sold a 
 great number of them at home and abroad at is. each, and I dispose 
 of them as quickly as I can make them. ' " 
 
 In an article on Writing Instruments, which appeared 
 in the Berlin Paper Zeitung, on the ipth of May, 1887, 
 the author says : 
 
 "A school teacher of Koningberg, named Burger, in the year 1808, 
 made pens from metal, but he got poor by his trials. After this time, 
 and probably imitating the pens of Burger, the English began to take 
 in hand the manufacture of pens ; especially Perry, he having perfected 
 the pens, as he did not restrict himself to the simple straight slit, but he 
 made cuts in the sides of different kinds." 
 
 In a pamphlet upon the manufacture of steel pens, 
 published in Paris, in 1884, the writer says : 
 
 ' ' The invention of the metallic pen is due to a French mechanic 
 Arnoux who lived in the eighteenth century, who made as far back as 
 1750 a number of metallic pens as a curiosity. This invention did not 
 have any immediate result in France but spread to England, and be- 
 came in Birmingham, about 1830, a very prosperous industry. A very 
 curious fact about this trade is that, in England, it does not exist out 
 of Birmingham, where there are about ten manufactories. In France it 
 has become localized in Boulogne." 
 
 There is also the " nameless Sheffield Artisan," who so 
 frequently figures in newspaper paragraphs as the in- 
 ventor of steel pens ; and William Gadsby, a mathemat- 
 ical instrument maker, who for his own use constructed 
 a clumsy article from the mainspring of a watch ; but 
 it is not till the beginning of the eighteenth century 
 that we get anything authentic respecting the making 
 of metallic pens. " Este," writing in " Local Notes 
 and Queries " (Birmingham Weekly Post) mentions a 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 
 
 remarkable little volume supplied to the members of the 
 States General of Holland, in the possession of Mr. W. 
 Bragge, of Sheffield, dated 1717. It contained a silver 
 pencil case, in two parts, one holding a piece of plum- 
 bago, mounted like a crayon, and the othera metallic pen. 
 We have seen this unique book (now the property of 
 Mr. Sam : Timmins). The pen is of the barrel shape, 
 apparently silver, and it must be regarded as the earliest 
 authentic metallic pen. Of the date there can be no 
 doubt, as the pen is made to pass through loops in the 
 cover of the volume to keep it closed, after the manner 
 of pocket books, and the book bears the date, printed on 
 the title page, 1717. 
 
 Pope, about the same time, received from Lady Frances 
 Shirley a present of a standish, containing a STEEL and a 
 gold pen. In acknowledging the receipt of this present, 
 the poet wrote an ode, in which the following lines 
 occur : 
 
 " Take at this hand celestial arms ; 
 Secure the radiant weapons wield ; 
 
 This golden lance shall guard desert, 
 And, if a vice dares keep the field, 
 
 This steel shall stab it to the heart. 
 Awed, on my bended knees I fell, 
 
 Received the weapons of the sky, 
 And dipped them in the sable well 
 
 The fount of fame or infamy. 
 What well ? What weapon ? Flavia cries, 
 
 A standish, steel and golden pen ! 
 It came from Bertrand 's,* not the skies, 
 I gave it you to write again." 
 
 * Bertrand kept a fancy shop in Bath. He died in 1755. His wife is men- 
 tioned by Horace Walpole, in his letter to George Montague, May i8th, 1749, 
 which letter is printed in his Correspondence. 
 
THE STORY OF THE 
 
 In No. 503 of the Spectator, bearing the date of Octo- 
 ber 7, 1712, Steele, mentioning the conspicuous manner 
 in which a certain lady conducted herself in church, says : 
 
 ' ' For she fixed her eyes upon the preacher, and as he said anything 
 she approved, with one of Charles Mather's fine tablets, she set down 
 the sentence, at once showing her fine hand, the gold pen, her readiness 
 in writing, and her judgments in choosing what to write." 
 
 Edmund Waller, about the middle of the seventeenth 
 century, acknowledged the receipt of a silver pen from a 
 lady, in the following verses : 
 
 " Madam ! intending to have try'd, 
 
 The silver favour which you gave, 
 In ink the shining point I dy'd, 
 
 And drench'd it in the sable wave ; 
 When, grieved to be so foully stained, 
 
 On you it thus to me complain'd. 
 
 "So I, the wronged pen to please, 
 Made it my humble thanks express 
 
 Unto your Ladyship, in these, 
 And now 'tis forced to confess 
 
 That your great self did ne'er indite 
 Nor that to me more noble write." 
 
 Mr. G. A. Lomas, writing to the Scientific American, 
 November 23, 1878, says : 
 
 " I write to inquire if you can give me information concerning the 
 manufacture of metal pens in this country. I may be vain in the sup- 
 position, but I am persuaded that my people the Shakers were the 
 originators of metal pens. I write this to you with a silver pen, one 
 slit, that w r as made in the year 1819, at this village, by the Shakers. 
 Two or three years previously to the use of silver pens, our people used 
 brass plates for their manufacture, but soon found silver preferable. 
 Some people sold these pens in the year 1819, at this village, for twenty- 
 five cents, and disposed of all that could be made." 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. n 
 
 ^^_____ 
 
 The writer further says the metal was made from sil- 
 ver coins. 
 
 This communication called forth the following from 
 another correspondent : 
 
 " The letter in the Scientific American, November 23, 1878, with 
 regard to the early manufacture of steel pens, reminds me of the fol- 
 lowing note which appeared in the Boston Mechanic, for August, 1835. 
 ' The inventor of steel pens,' says the Journal of Commerce, ' was an 
 American and a well-known resident of our city (New York), Mr. Pere- 
 grine Williamson. In the year 1800, Mr. W., then a working jeweler, at 
 Baltimore, while attending an evening school, finding some difficulty in 
 making a quill pen to suit him, made one of steel. It would not write 
 well, however, for want of flexibility. After a while he made an addi- 
 tional slit on each side of the main one, and the pens were so much 
 improved that Mr. W. was called to make them in such numbers as to 
 eventually occupy his whole time, and that of a journeyman. At first 
 the business was very profitable and enabled Mr. W. to realize for the 
 labor of himself and journeyman a clear profit of six hundred dollars 
 per month. The English soon borrowed the invention, and some who 
 first engaged in the business realized immense fortunes.' " 
 
 We do not kno.w how much reliance may be placed 
 upon this statement, but, if the last assertion "that those 
 who first engaged in the business realized immense fort- 
 unes " may be taken as a test, the whole must be re- 
 ceived with a grain of salt. The letter appeared in the 
 Boston Mechanic, in 1835, and at that date there were 
 penmakers who had made a modest competence, but in 
 no case were they possessed of immense fortunes. 
 
 In London Notes and Queries, the following appears 
 respecting early steel pens : 
 
 " THE FIRST STEEL PEN. (sth S., iii., 395.) Ten years before Dr. 
 Priestley was born steel pens were in use. There are references to them 
 in the Diary of John Byrom, who required them when writing short- 
 hand. In a letter to his sister Phoebe, dated August, 1723, he 
 
12 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 mentions them as follows : ' Alas ! alas ! I cannot meet with a steel 
 pen, no manner of where I believe I have asked at 375 places, but 
 that which I have is at your service, as the owner himself always is.' " 
 (Remains, vol. i., 39.) 
 
 Mr. Ralph N. James, writing to Notes and Queries, 
 gives the following extract from the very amusing "Jour- 
 ney to Paris," by Dr. Martin Lister, 1698 : 
 
 " There was one thing very curious, and that was a Writing Instru- 
 ment of thick and strong silver wire, bound up like a hollow button or 
 screw, with both ends pointing one way, and at a distance, so that a 
 man might easily put his forefinger betwixt the two points, and the 
 point divided in two, just like our steel pens" London Notes and 
 Queries, vol. iii., page 346. 
 
 This note caused another writer, Mr. C. A. Ward, to 
 send the following : 
 
 "STEEL PENS. The extract given from Dr. M. Lister's, by Mr. 
 Ralph N. James, is very interesting. The doctor there speaks of ' our 
 steel pens? as if they were not at all uncommon. When the poet 
 Churchill's effects were sold up, after his death, Nov. 10, 1764, they 
 fetched extravagant prices ; ' a common steel pen ' brought 5." Lon- 
 don Notes and Queries, vol iii., page 474. 
 
 The following extract from London Notes and Queries 
 gives very plausible reasons against placing confidence 
 in the preceding and other notices of ancient steel pens : 
 
 " STEEL PENS, (sth S., vol. iii. , pp. 346, 474.) May I ask whether, in 
 giving the interesting references to the use of steel pens before the time 
 of Priestley (one reference even going so far back as the seventeenth 
 century) your correspondents have carefully considered what is meant by 
 the terms. For my own part (of course I may be quite wrong) I should 
 naturally have anticipated steel pens in these references to mean not the 
 modern steel nib for ordinary penmanship, but the ancient steel pen 
 for drawing lines or ruling circles, such as is contained in every box of 
 mathematical instruments. This would explain (to some extent) the 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 13 
 
 great price fetched for a good one of Churchill's ; a mere old steel nib 
 would scarcely enter into a sale at all. It would explain, too, why a 
 special process of hardening should be applied to a quill, in order to 
 make it do duty for the steel instrument. One would scarcely think of 
 hardening a quill in order to enable it to compete with a steel nib in 
 some of the least desirable qualities, though one often wishes one 
 could accomplish the reverse process, and soften or supple a steel 
 1 stick frog,' so as to give it the elasticity of the grey goose quill." 
 V. H. I. L. L. C. IV. (iv., 37, 5th S., London Notes and Queries.} 
 
 Mr. R. Prosser, author of " Birmingham Inventors and 
 Inventions," in writing to the compiler of this work, says : 
 
 " It has often occurred to me that some of the very early references 
 to metallic pens may perhaps mean the draughtsman's ' ruling pen,' and 
 not an instrument made after the fashion of a quill pen with a slit in 
 it. That it is possible to write with such an instrument this paragraph 
 will show, but I must admit that it is not equal to one of Perry's J's." 
 
 From an entry in " Pepy's Diary," October 24, 1660, 
 drawing pens appear to have been in use in London, at 
 the time of the Restoration : 
 
 "To Mr. Lilly's, where, not finding Mr. Spong, I went to Mr. 
 Greatorex, where I met him, and where I bought a draining pen" 
 
 In London Notes and Queries (4th S., xi., 440), the 
 Rev. E. Smedley, editor of the Encyclopaedia Metropoli- 
 tana, writing to his friend, Mr. H. Hawkins, April 10, 
 1833, says: 
 
 " The process of nibbing and shaving is one which I always abomi- 
 nated, and for years past I have taken refuge under the Perryian pens. 
 The one with which I now write has been in use daily, and all day 
 long, for more than a fortnight, and I consider that it still owes me 
 quite as much worth as it has already furnished. Every packet con- 
 tains nine pens, and on an average two out of that number fail to suit 
 my hand, but the remaining seven are faithful servants, and their price 
 is 2s." 
 
14 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 In London Notes and Queries (4th S., xii , 57) a writer 
 says : 
 
 " I bought my first steel pen from Bramah, Piccadilly, in 1825. The 
 price was is. 6d. It was very thick and hard, with very little elasticity. 
 In 1829 I read advertised in the Times, steel pens, with holder, 33. 
 per dozen, at Kendal's, in Holborn. They were hand made, and 
 much easier to write with than Bramah's. Soon after the price fell, 
 and steel pens became common." 
 
 In London Notes and Queries (4th S., x., 309), October 
 19, 1872, Mr. William Bates, speaking of a visit he paid to 
 an old lady, at Studley (Worcestershire) about 1825, says 
 that he saw an exquisitely-finished inkstand of pure gold, 
 the gift of one of the Earls of Plymouth to her father, 
 100 years before. The inkstand was provided with a 
 jointed gold penholder, terminating in a barrel (one slit) 
 pen, resembling the metallic pen of the present day, ex- 
 cept that he found that it would not write. 
 
 In " Local Notes and Queries," published in the Bir- 
 mingham Journal and Weekly Post, there have appeared 
 a number of contributions relating to the early manufact- 
 ure of steel pens. We reproduce them here. A corre- 
 spondent writing on June 22, 1869, says: "Daniel Fel- 
 lows, of Sedgley, made steel pens about 1800." 
 
 Another writer, on the same date, says, "The first 
 makers of steel pens were John Edwards, Hill Street, 
 and Francis Heeley, Mount Street, Birmingham." 
 
 Respecting the former of these, in Wrightsons Bir- 
 mingham Directory, 1823, the following advertisement 
 appears : " John Edwards, manufacturer of improved 
 gold, silver, and elastic steel pens, mounted in all kinds of 
 cases, and desk handles, No. 40 Hill Street. N. B. The 
 pens are warranted to write exceedingly fine and free." 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 15 
 
 This advertisement contained engravings of a barrel 
 and " nibbed " or " slip " pen. 
 
 J. Sargent, writing from Tettenhall, June 28, 1869, 
 says : 
 
 " A journeyman blacksmith, named Fellows, of Sedgley, was the first 
 originator of steel pens. I resided at Sedgley in 1822, when Sheldon, 
 Fellows's apprentice, made some of these pens. He made two for me. 
 I wrote very well with them. Sheldon himself told me that Mr. 
 Gillott commenced making the pen from seeing some of his (Sheldon's) 
 make." 
 
 Some one writing under the nom de plu 
 Sait," says : 
 
 "I distinctly recollect, about the year 1806, being 
 in Sedgley, and there seeing Thomas Sheldon, his apj 
 steel pens. He knew of an entry in his books of pens 
 Fellows in 1807. He paid Sheldon 100 in 1822. He believed 
 lows made pens in 1793. Beilby and Knott (Birmingham stationers) 
 sold these pens in considerable quantities from 1818 to 1828. Sheldon 
 continued the trade until it was destroyed through inability to compete 
 with the machine-made pens of Mitchell and Gillott." 
 
 Another writer, "T. S.," says : 
 
 " In 1815, an uncle of mine used to purchase these pens from Shel- 
 don, of Sedgley. The price was eighteen shillings per dozen, ten per 
 cent, for cash. They were barrel shape. B. Smith and Co. had in 
 their pattern book of engravings of steel toys a drawing of one of these 
 pens, which were sold at thirty shillings per dozen ; also one in a bone 
 handle, the top of which screwed off, for carrying in the pocket, at 
 thirty-six shillings per dozen." 
 
 Another correspondent, writing on July 24, 1869, men- 
 tions (on authority of the late Mr. Alderman Yates) that 
 an old man named Spittle made steel pens before any of 
 the present makers. 
 
1 6 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 In note 319 this man Spittle is mentioned by another 
 writer, who says : 
 
 "A man named Spittle, one of the earliest makers of steel pens, lived 
 in Chequers' Walk, Bath Row, Birmingham. He made steel pens for 
 sale, and charged one shilling each for them. They were made with a 
 tube to fit on a quill. I bought one from him forty-five years ago 
 (1824)." 
 
 " E. W.," writing in 1869, says : 
 
 "In 1821 there was a B. Smith, steel toy maker, St. Paul's [Mary's] 
 Square, Birmingham. He had a book of engravings of steel toys, 
 among which were steel pens, made to screw on and off. This pat- 
 tern book might have been one hundred years old. I sold his pens 
 in 1823." 
 
 The Editor of "Notes and Queries" says "Smith's 
 pattern book was probably fifty years old," and further 
 remarks that steel pens must have been a regular article 
 of manufacture before they appeared in a steel toy 
 maker's pattern book. 
 
 "C. J.," in note 372, says: 
 
 " The pattern book of John Barnes, Eagle Works, Wolverhampton, 
 contains engravings of early steel pens." 
 
 Mr. Robert Griffin says : 
 
 " In 1824 I wrote very much with a steel pen made under the direc- 
 tion of James Perry a pen that lasted about eight or nine weeks, writ- 
 ing eight hours a day." 
 
 In note 344, " Anon " says he remembered his father 
 (who had premises in Water Street, Birmingham), in the 
 summer of 1823, bringing a tall, quiet, respectable man 
 to the manufactory. He had a piece of iron, or steel, 
 which he required to be cut up into strips of about two 
 inches wide. The man said he was going to get the 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. I? 
 
 strips rolled to make into steel pens. He gave the writer 
 of the note sixpence and a barrel pen for his trouble. 
 In answer to inquiries the writer put to his father, the 
 latter stated he did not know the man's name nor where 
 he lived, but " that he met with him in a smoke room, 
 where he (the father) sometimes spent his evenings." 
 The writer further remarks : " Where the man had got 
 his ideas from which induced him to try his hand at mak- 
 ing steel pens I do not know, but I have an impression 
 that there were several experimenters in existence at 
 that time ; and very soon afterward Mr. William (Joseph) 
 Gillott, with whom my father was on terms of intimacy, 
 came into notice as a maker of steel pens." This is a 
 very important statement, as it fixes a date respecting 
 pens being made from sheet steel. 
 
 One of the oldest toolmakers in the trade has informed 
 us that, about the year 1823 or 1824, he was frequently 
 taken by his father to visit an uncle named Clulee, 
 who rented power at the Water Street mill. On these 
 occasions his father and uncle would talk about 'the 
 visits of Gillott to the latter, and the hopeful manner in 
 which he spoke of the experiments he was then making. 
 Gillott rented power at the Water Street mill, and was 
 engaged in grinding and finishing penknife blades, which 
 were inserted in one end of a silver pencil case, which 
 his relative Mitchell was then making. 
 
 Now, who was this " tall, quiet, respectable man ? " It 
 could not have been Gillott, as he was not tall and the 
 father of " Anon " knew him ; and Mitchell was also a 
 short man. We have failed to trace him, and his identity 
 is lost among the " sowers " who failed to reap the har- 
 vest of their inventions. 
 
1 8 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 Mr. George Wallis, speaking of steel pens, remarks : 
 
 " I wrote with one when a boy (1822 to 1826), having found several 
 in a stock of old steel waste in the warehouse of a relative, a retired 
 ornamental steel worker, at Wolverhampton. These pens were made 
 (so I was told) for the London market, late in the last or early in the 
 present century. Certainly they were made fifteen or, perhaps, twenty 
 years, when I found them, as the manufactory in which they had been 
 produced had been closed the former number of years. They con- 
 sisted of a holder of steel, with flutings and facets. One was solid and 
 tapered to lighten it ; the other had a barrel with an internal screw. 
 The pen had two screws ; one was used to screw the pen into the bar- 
 rel for use, and the other to secure it when turned inwards as a protec- 
 tion when not in use, or to carry in the pocket." 
 
 The following letter from Mr. Alderman Manton to 
 Mr. Sam: Timmins makes us acquainted with another 
 manufacturer of steel pens : 
 
 " THE METAL PENS OF 1823. In a badly-constructed and unsani- 
 tary manufactory (Mr. James Collins's), at the back of 119 Suffolk Street, 
 (Birm.), I witnessed the process of making silver and steel pens. As 
 both metals were manufactured in the same manner, one description 
 will serve. It will be remembered by a few that at that time there was 
 a patent silver pencil case somewhat extensively manufactured, which 
 in addition to the pencil, had a penknife, pen and toothpick provided. 
 The penknife was supplied by two brothers Joseph and William 
 Gillott who at that time rented a small shop in a corner of the yard 
 belonging to the rolling mill of George and P. F. Muntz, Water Street, 
 and from whose engine they obtained the small amount of steam power 
 needed. The process of making the pens was as follows : Two nar- 
 row strips were cut from a sheet of silver or steel ; they were then, by 
 the help of the hammer and a lead cake, or piece of hard wood, curved. 
 Afterwards the two strips were placed opposite to each other on a well- 
 polished steel wire, and drawn through a draw-plate, the wire and 
 plate being supplied by Wm. Billings, a celebrated tool manufacturer, 
 occupying premises near the top of Snow Hill (Birm.). By the aid of 
 a press, a small hole was made at a distance of half an inch or five- 
 eighths from the end, the slit was then made by a fine saw made of 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 19 
 
 watch springs. A bent pair of shears was used for cutting the end of 
 strip into the shape of a pen ; and a half-round file or smooth was used 
 for finishing the pen. The pen was then sawn off the strip by the 
 same saw which was used for slitting the pen. The only hardening 
 process was the friction of the draw-plate and steel wire. I not only 
 witnessed the process, but was a manipulator. The cost of making at 
 that time, by a journeyman, was 2d. each ; by an apprentice, about 
 one-third of that amount. Within less than thirty years of that time, 
 in a manufactory adjoining my own, pens were made and sold (whole- 
 sale) at 2d. per gross, and a box containing them into the bargain." 
 (Signed] Henry Manton, September 15, 1886. 
 
 Mr. T. Vary writes that James Perry began making 
 steel pens in Manchester, and quotes the Saturday Maga- 
 zine to show that metallic pens were given by him as re- 
 wards of merit in schools as far back as 1819. 
 
 Mr. James Cocker, writing in the Sheffield Daily Tele- 
 graph, in 1869, says : " That he rolled steel wire for James 
 Perry for penmaking in 1829." 
 
 The death of Mr. Gillott seems to have revived the dis- 
 cussion of the origin of steel pens, and a correspondent 
 in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, in the issue of January 
 n, 1872, in the following letter, puts forth a claim on 
 behalf of a Sheffield man : 
 
 " The well-written and well-merited memoir of the late Mr. Gillott, 
 the Birmingham steel pen maker, which has just appeared in the news- 
 papers, affords a curious and instructive illustration of the success which 
 not seldom attends the combined action of ingenuity, industry, shrewd- 
 ness, and integrity among our labouring classes. Born in the 
 humblest rank of our local workmen, a steady scholar in our Boys' 
 Lancasterian School, and apprenticed to a scissors grinder, the deceased 
 worked his way upwards into a, position of influence and opulence as a 
 manufacturer, which entitled him to~take social rank with the merchant 
 princes of the land. And if his name has long since ceased to be 
 familiar among his once contemporary workmen in Sheffield, and is 
 not even mentioned in the Directory, it has for several years past been 
 
20 THE STOR Y OF THE 
 
 recognized and respected by the visitors at the annual exhibitions of 
 our School of Art, in connection with the many rare and valuable pict- 
 ures lent by him on those occasions. The printed fac-simile of the 
 autograph appeared in the ' advertising columns ' of almost every news- 
 paper in the world, and perhaps, as an expert might have said, was 
 characteristic. In the admirable account of his life above referred to 
 stress is laid upon one prominent and praiseworthy feature of his char- 
 acter, viz. , his readiness to acknowledge the obscurity of his origin and 
 the steps of his industrial success. In those details no mention is made 
 of his Sheffield master and predecessor in the ingenious art of steel pen 
 making. And as the notice alluded to is without dates, it is difficult 
 to furnish information on the material point of priority, though the fact 
 of supremacy in the trade is clear enough. In one of the columns of 
 Lardner's Cyclopedia, published in 1833, the names of Perry, Heeley, 
 and Skinner are mentioned as steel pen makers. With the latter, who 
 if he did not make wealth, certainly earned a wide reputation for the 
 low price and excellent temper of his ' steel nibs,' Mr. Gillott was a 
 workman, in Nursery Street, Sheffield, having gone with his master 
 from the scissors grinding stone to the making of polished steel orna- 
 ments for ladies' work, then fashionable. How much, in what way, 
 or whether at all, he was indebted to his experience in Mr. Skinner's 
 establishment may be questionable, but that he learnt and first saw 
 practised in Sheffield the art that ultimately enriched him in Birming- 
 ham, he would probably be the last to deny. It is well remembered 
 by a worthy dealer in almost every useful article, from a mouse-trap to 
 a railroad wagon, that Gillott, soon after his establishment in Bir- 
 mingham, came into our townsman's shop, and seeing on the counter 
 a model steam engine of half-horse power, at once purchased and car- 
 ried it off to give motion to some part of his pen machinery. Brass 
 pens were made in Sheffield before the close of the last century. They 
 mostly accompanied an ' inkpot,' called from its users an ' exciseman.' 
 The writer of this paragraph himself made hundreds of dozens of 
 them, which, however, he never used, nor steel ones either, as long as 
 he could get a ' goose quill,' good, bad or indifferent. The matter of 
 slitting the nib was kept secret by Skinner, and the double slit of 
 Gillott more than doubled the value of his old master's invention ; 
 but a ' four-slit' pen, i. <?., with five points, if possible to make, would 
 be useless. The earliest experimenter in form and material was Perry, 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 21 
 
 flexibility being the great desideratum ; but it is curious to see how 
 world-wide a currency Gillott's name and trade have given to the 
 simplest shape ; and still more curious to note how the makers of 
 writing ink and paper have conformed these articles to the require- 
 ments of the uses of the steel pen. It is always gratifying, and not 
 unprofitable, to contrast the small and feeble beginnings of any manu- 
 facturing enterprise with a large and well-merited success." 
 
 This communication appears to have caused a Mr. 
 William Levesley to call u'pon the writer of the preced- 
 ing epistle, and the following which appeared in the 
 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, January 30, 1872, was written : 
 
 " I have to thank you for the insertion of my queries as to the early 
 connection%f Sheffield with steel pen making. In consequence of the 
 appearance of my letter in the Telegraph, a cutlery manufacturer of 
 the name of William Levesley, called upon me, and informed me that 
 he was not only an early associate with the late Mr. Gillott, of Bir- 
 mingham, but the first person who made a steel pen out of London. 
 Stress has been laid upon Gillott's ability ' to forge and grind a knife- 
 blade.' It is not likely he ever used the hammer on hot steel, but he 
 was when young, and working with father, accounted an excellent pen- 
 knife grinder ; Skinner being a scissors grinder, and Levesley a work- 
 board hand for the same master. A man of the name of Mitchell hav- 
 ing married Gillott's mother, went to Birmingham, and began the cut- 
 lery business, the latter removing thither to grind for his father-in-law. 
 His brother had also gone thither, and commenced making an article 
 that had some run, and may be said to have united the ingenious handi- 
 crafts of Birmingham, viz. , the insertion of a penknife blade at the end 
 of a silver pencil case. Meanwhile, about the year 1825, Levesley saw 
 a steel pen, made by Perry, of London, in Ridge's shop window, in 
 High Street. He bought it for one shilling, and immediately set about 
 making tools to imitate and improve upon it. He spent, he said, 30 
 in not unsuccessful, though unremunerative, experiments. The fly- 
 press was at least as well known in Sheffield as in Birmingham, and its 
 power was at once brought into requisition to work the tools for shap- 
 ing, bending, and slitting the pens which were made out of sheet steel, 
 Perry's being made out of thick wire, rolled flat, by Cocker, in Nursery 
 
THE STORY OF THE 
 
 Street. In 1829, Levesley was making pens for sale, and that year is 
 said to be the earliest date of actual sales in Skinner's ledger. In 1831 
 he was doing a considerable business in Sheffield, and making experi- 
 ments upon the article, as appears from specimens before me bearing 
 his name. Stress has been laid upon the improvement of the double 
 slit, introduced by Gillott, but if Levesley's statement is to be taken 
 literally, he was the inventor of a specialty upon which, even more than 
 on excellence of material, the merit of a steel pen is found to depend, 
 viz., the grinding of a small hollow at the back of the nib, and about 
 the eighth of an inch from the point. My informant described not only 
 the beneficial action of this thinning of the metal, as well in yielding 
 the gradual flow of the ink as in flexibility of writing, but the pleasure 
 with which he took a specimen to Birmingham to show Gillott, and the 
 surprise of the latter at so great and so beneficial an effect, provided 
 by so small a cause. He at once adopted an improvement of which 
 every pen made by him bears evidence ; and when his friend visited 
 him he told him he had fifty women employed in grinding pen points. 
 It is pleasant to add that Gillott never visited Sheffield without calling 
 to see his old friend Levesley, while the latter spoke of his early and 
 later life with respect and commendation, especially in his domestic 
 relations. It is pleasing to review a life of such humble beginnings, 
 culminating in opulence and usefulness like that of the late Joseph 
 Gillott, of Birmingham ; nor is it less to name in connection therewith, 
 as an early experimenter in steel pen making, our worthy townsman, 
 William Levesley, to whose ingenious improvement every writer is so 
 much indebted, and of whose verbal communication to me the forego- 
 ing is an imperfect sketch." ' 
 
 Now, in this statement, there are some dates given, 
 but others are omitted, and that is a very unfortunate 
 circumstance. Levesley told the writer of the article in 
 the Sheffield Daily Telegraph that he made use of the fly 
 press for working tools for shaping, bending, and slitting 
 pens. If the writer had only given the date of this it 
 would have been a valuable contribution toward a his- 
 tory of the invention. The claim of Levesley to having 
 invented the process of grinding pens and teaching 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 23 
 
 Gillott seems, to say the least, curious, because the latter 
 was a Sheffield grinder, and the idea would certainly be 
 quite as likely to occur to Gillott as Levesley. Besides, 
 why did LevesLey communicate the idea to Gillott in 
 preference to Skinner, with whom he had business rela- 
 tions? The statement that Gillott had fifty girls em- 
 ployed when Levesley* called upon him on his next visit 
 to Birmingham looks like a mistake. Fifty girls would 
 grind on an average seven thousand gross of pens in a 
 week, and as this correspondence appears to refer to the 
 early part of Gillott's career, it is scarcely possible that 
 such a number of pens were produced weekly at that 
 period. Besides, as a matter of fact, boys were, in the 
 first instance, employed to grind pens. 
 
 Herr Ignaz Nagel, in his " Report on Writing, Draw- 
 ing, and Painters' Requisites," at the Vienna Exhibition, 
 1873, says : 
 
 "From careful inquiries that we made in Birmingham, we learned 
 that a knife cutler, of Sheffield, was the first man who had the idea of 
 making pens of steel, and that a tinman of the name of Skipper 
 [Skinner], of Sheffield, afterwards manufactured the pens in great quan- 
 tities. His son developed the idea still further. This, according to 
 our informant, was fifty years ago. A steel pen artisan, working in 
 Birmingham, remembers perfectly well reading the announcement in a 
 window of the High Street, in Sheffield, 1816 : ' Steel pens are 
 
 * Mr. Sam: Timmins says, " that Levesley told him that Gillott started in 
 Birmingham as a jobbing cutler ; that Mitchell had the secret of pen making ; 
 that Mitchell sent for Gillott to come to Birmingham, and that he (J. G.) first 
 lived at the top of Water Street ; that Gillott began to make pens in Bread 
 Street ; that Perry made pens from flattened steel wire, the breadth of the 
 pen (the steel was 33. 6d. per lb., and drawn at Old Ford); that he had seen 
 cross grinding (at Gillott's) in Newhall Street, and fifty women at work ; and 
 that pens 1 ad double slits and cut holes. Levesley certainly knew all the 
 Gillott family, personally, in Sheffield, and he (S. T.) had a long interview with 
 him shortly before his death, when he mentioned all the facts given here." 
 
24 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 repaired here at sixpence apiece.' There was a man named Spittle, in 
 Birmingham, who used to make steel pens by hand. He was suc- 
 ceeded by the brothers John and William Mitchell, who were manu- 
 facturers of steel pens, wholesale and by machinery, about forty-five 
 years ago. Perry came afterwards, and took out a patent for the first 
 steel pens, and after him Gillott, who had learnt the business with the 
 Mitchells." 
 
 A writer in Herbert's Encyclopedia, published in 1837, 
 says : 
 
 " The first decided attempt to introduce metallic pens to general use 
 was made by Mr. Wise, whose perpetual pens will doubtless be remem- 
 bered by many of our readers. The name of W r ise was rendered con- 
 spicuous in most of our stationers' shops some twenty-five or thirty 
 years since, as the original inventor and general manufacturer of the 
 steel pens." 
 
 We stated at the beginning of this article that of three 
 men Mitchell, Gillott, and Mason who might have 
 done something toward fixing the date of the inven- 
 tion of manufacturing pens by the adaptation of tools 
 worked by the screw press, only one Mason made a 
 statement : 
 
 " The first making of steel pens that I know of was about the year 
 1780, by my late friend Mr. Harrison, for Dr. Priestley. He took 
 sheet steel, made a tube of it, and the part joined formed the slit of the 
 pen. He then filed away the barrel and formed the pen. I found 
 some of the identical pens amongst other articles and used them for a 
 long time. 
 
 ' ' The second mode of making pens was by punching a rough blank 
 out of thin sheet steel. This blank formed the well-known barrel pen. 
 It was brought into the barrel shape by rounding, but before rounding 
 it had to be filed into a better form about the nib, and when rounded 
 in the soft state, a sharp chisel was used to mark the inside of the pen 
 which became the slit, after hardening. Before tempering, this mark 
 was ' tabbered ' with a small hammer, and it would crack where the 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 25 
 
 inside mark was made. Then it was tempered and underwent grind- 
 ing, and shaping the nib until a point suitable for fine or broad, as 
 required. 
 
 " I made barrel pens in 1828, and ' slip' pens for Perry in 1829, and 
 the first lot of 100 at one time was sent November 20, 1830. Fre- 
 quently, lots of 20 or 30 gross were sent between 1829 and 1830, and 
 in 1831 I sent pens to Perry amounting to 1,421 is. 3d. 
 
 ' ' Perry certainly never made a pen as they are now made, viz. , the 
 slit cttt with press tools ; all he made were cracked slit. 
 
 " I made steel barrel pens some time before I made ' slip ' pens for 
 Perry. 
 
 " It is doubtful when metal pens were made. The first I know of 
 were made by Mr. Harrison, for Dr. Priestley. Perry was certainly 
 not the first maker of steel pens, but I have no doubt that he was the 
 first steel slip pen maker, and no doubt the first to use a goose quill for 
 a pen holder, hence the slip pen. 
 
 " The first stick pen holders I made for Perry in 1832, and for Gillott 
 in 1835, and sold sticks to Gillott in 1840 293 i8s. yd." 
 
 Mason claimed to have made barrel pens for Perry, of 
 London, in 1828, and "slip or nibbed" pens in 1829; 
 but he does not appear to have made any claim to prior- 
 ity of invention over Mitchell and Gillott. 
 
 Now, although Mitchell made no claim himself, on the 
 death of Mr. Gillott the following letter appeared in the 
 Daily Post : 
 
 ' ' The remarks which have appeared in a local paper upon the death 
 of Mr. J. Gillott, that the steel pen owes its existence to him, and that 
 the adaptation of machinery to the manufacture of metallic pens was 
 his invention, lead the public to wrong conclusions. It is due to the 
 memory of my late father John Mitchell that I should state that he 
 not only made steel pens, but used machinery in their production, for 
 some time before Mr. Gillott commenced in that branch of business." 
 HENRY MITCHELL, January 12, 1872. 
 
 In October, 1876, Mr. Henry Mitchell writes to Arts' 's 
 Gazette, and says : 
 
26 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 " You review, in your impression of the 23d inst., a work entitled 
 'British Manufacturing Industries the Birmingham Trades,' in 
 which the history of steel pens forms a prominent chapter. I beg to 
 point out that my late father's name John Mitchell is certainly men- 
 tioned in a list of the manufacturers of the article, and, to my great 
 surprise, simply so. In a part of the work the author states that ' The 
 early history of steel pens is involved in obscurity.' My object in 
 writing to you is to remove that obscurity, as I am satisfied you will be 
 equally desirous of giving honor to whom honor is due. I claim 
 that honor for my late father John Mitchell who was the first to 
 introduce the making of steel pens by means of tools, which were purely 
 his own invention, and I will leave it to an enlightened public to judge 
 if it is not one of the greatest benefits conferred on any civilized com- 
 munity. Whatever others may have done does not remove the fact 
 that the inventor I have named was tny father ; and it is only due to 
 him that posterity should know who originated the means whereby 
 millions of human beings of the present time, and generations yet un- 
 born are, and will be, enabled to communicate their thoughts to each 
 other with a facility they otherwise would not have had. For, unless 
 the steel pen had been manufactured by tools and machinery, that use- 
 ful article would virtually be at a prohibitory price. The date of the 
 invention I believe to be 1822 or thereabouts." 
 
 This is very emphatic ; but how far may it be taken as 
 an unprejudiced statement of facts ? Well, it has never 
 been contradicted ; and Gillott never made a claim on his 
 own behalf, as having made pens before Mitchell. Mason 
 gave the year 1828 as the date when he commenced 
 making pens, so that the evidence is in favor of Mitchell. 
 
 We have heard this statement of Henry Mitchell con- 
 firmed by a man who worked for Mitchell, as a boy, and 
 who remembered pens being made for Sheldon by Mitch- 
 ell. It is probable at this early period the pens were 
 made for a few dealers, and the general public was un- 
 acquainted with the names of the manufacturers. This 
 circumstance has no doubt contributed to involve in 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 27 
 
 obscurity the early operations of Mitchell and Gillott. In 
 a notice in Lardners Cyclopedia (written by Mr. John 
 Holland, of Sheffield), published in 1833, the names of 
 three penmakers only are given Perry, Heeley, and 
 Skinner. From this it might be supposed that there were 
 no other penmakers at this date ; but Gillott had taken 
 out a patent in 1831, and the names of both Mitchell and 
 Gillott appeared as penmakers in Wrightsons Birming- 
 ham Directory for 1830. It cannot be supposed that Mr. 
 Holland wilfully omitted to mention the names of Mitch- 
 ell and Gillott, for this writer was an impartial and pains- 
 taking collector of facts, but it is probable the notice was 
 written some time before it was published ; and, like many 
 little masters, Mitchell and Gillot were only known as 
 penmakers to the wholesale dealers in Birmingham, upon 
 whom they depended for orders, consequently Mr. Hol- 
 land would be ignorant of their existence. 
 
 In speaking of the demand for steel pens, the writer in 
 Lardner's says : " The rage originated chiefly, if not al- 
 together, in the successful speculations of Mr. James 
 Perry, of London, whose pens, however short their merits 
 may fall of the praise of the inventor, are certainly su- 
 perior to most others composed of a like material. Perry 
 began to make steel pens, in Manchester, in 1819, and in 
 London in 1824." The press and tools with which these 
 pens were made are still in the possession of Perry and 
 Co., at their warehouse in the Holburn Viaduct. This 
 fact tends to confirm the statement that Mr. James Perry 
 was one of the earliest experimenters in the manufacture 
 of the article. Levesley says he bought one of Perry's 
 pens, which he saw in a shop window in Sheffield, in 
 1825, and he took it to his workshop and improved upon 
 
28 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 it. This is somewhat similar to the account given by 
 Mason of his first experiment in pen making. Mason 
 saw a pen of Perry's in the window of a bookseller named 
 Peart, in Bull Street, Birmingham, in 1828, which he pur- 
 chased and took home. Finding he could produce a 
 better article, which could be sold at a cheaper rate, he 
 made some and sent them to Mr. James Perry, in Lon- 
 don, and that gentleman shortly after waited upon Josiah 
 Mason, at his place of business in Lancaster Street, and 
 the interview resulted in Mason beginning to make pens 
 for Perry. It will be remembered that the writer in the 
 Sheffield Daily Telegraph stated that the earliest experi- 
 menter in form and material was Perry. 
 
 Leaving the honor of having originated the application 
 of labor-saving machinery for the manufacture of steel 
 pens to Mitchell, it would appear that the merit of hav- 
 ing popularized the article is due to Perry. In 1830, Mr. 
 James Perry issued a circular containing a series of en- 
 gravings of metallic pens, showing the improvements he 
 had patented in their manufacture. In this circular it is 
 stated : " Till about six months ago the public had heard 
 little of metallic pens. At present, it would seem that 
 comparatively few of any other kind are in the hands of 
 any class of the community. This sudden transition may 
 clearly be traced to the announcement of the Patent Per- 
 ryian Pens in various periodicals, about six months ago, 
 and to the general demand which ensued for that pen in 
 every part of the empire." 
 
 Although this might be regarded as an ex-parte state- 
 ment, it is confirmed by independent testimony that 
 Perry popularized the article. The Saturday Magazine, 
 1838, says : 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 29 
 
 "About twelve years ago (1825), the celebrated Perryian pens first ap- 
 peared. Mr. Perry may be regarded in the light of a great improver ; 
 many of his pens are ingenious and original in construction. Ke ar- 
 ranges his pens into genera and species. Mr. Perry first overcame the 
 rigidity complained of in steel pens by introducing apertures between 
 the shoulder and point of the pen, thus transferring the elasticity of the 
 pen to a position below instead of above the shoulder. This was the 
 subject of his patent in 1830." 
 
 Mr. Sam: Timmins, in 1866, writes : 
 
 44 No skill in manufacture, however, could conquer the prejudice 
 against any metallic pen, and to Mr. James Perry the world is much 
 indebted for persevering advocacy of the steel pen, and for one of the 
 most important improvements in its form. Mr. Perry, with his char- 
 acteristic energy, almost forced the steel pen into use, and was supplied 
 with pens of a first-class quality by Mr. Josiah Mason, of this town." 
 
 Furthermore, it is certain that about this time, steel 
 pens began rapidly to supersede the use of quills,* and 
 the trade was recognized as a rising industry. It is true 
 that it still retained the secretive character with which 
 its operations were conducted in its earlier days, which 
 indeed in some respects distinguish it at the present time. 
 Its activity or dullness seldom troubles the writers of the 
 " Trade Reports " in the local press, although they some- 
 times inform their readers about good orders having been 
 
 *In a humorous article, "The Web-footed Interests," which appeared in 
 Tail's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. iii., page 280 (1833), there is a petition to the 
 House of Commons, from Ganders, Geese & Goslings, setting forth the evils 
 likely to ensue from the use of metallic pens. It prognosticates depression in 
 agriculture and manufactures consequent upon a diminution in the amount 
 of grain consumed, and a falling off in the demand for penknives ; and draws 
 an alarming picture of the possible failure of the supply of iron ware, and the 
 total extinction of literature, likely to ensue thrqj^gk'a stdppage in the supply 
 of steel pens, the web-footed interest being jd^Sosed to have ceased to exist. 
 The petition concludes with a prayer that dfiemVAfacture of metallic pens be 
 prohibited. 
 
3 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 placed for mousetraps, stove screws, snuffer trays, candle 
 extinguishers, and sad irons. 
 
 To the writers of the present generation, who can pur- 
 chase fairly-good pens at one shilling or one shilling and 
 sixpence per gross, it seems hard to realize that people 
 once gave one shilling each for substitutes for quills. It 
 is true that quills could then be bought for a halfpenny 
 and penny each, but how difficult it was to acquire the 
 art of successfully manipulating the same into a pen the 
 following anecdote from " Edwards' Life of Rowland 
 Hill " will testify : 
 
 " Mrs. Sinkinson, of Jamaica Row, Birmingham, tells me she went to 
 a school in Hurst Street, and that she remembered that old Mr. Hill 
 came one day a week to teach arithmetic, and Rowland [Sir Rowland 
 Hill] on another to teach writing. In those days there were no steel 
 pens, and Rowland couldn't mend a pen, so that whenever he came he 
 was accompanied by his brother, Matthew Davenport, whose office it 
 was to mend the pens used by the pupils the preceding week." 
 
 Sir Josiah Mason used to relate a similar circumstance 
 in his own life, when at Kidderminster, that he accom- 
 panied his brother Richard, who was a Sunday-school 
 teacher, to mend the pens. 
 
 Comparing the crude specimens of early steel pens 
 with the finished productions of the present day, we -may 
 be inclined to think that some praise was due to the 
 people who persevered in the use of them ; but that the 
 purchasers of these early productions did appreciate them 
 we have the testimony of Mr. Robert Griffin, who says 
 that he wrote for eight weeks, eight hours a day, with a 
 pen made by Perry, in 1824. Now, the old ".scribes" as 
 the law stationers' writers were called, were generally 
 allowed one quill a day, and as the work of the day 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 31 
 
 usually wore out the longest quill, a considerable amount 
 of time must have been occupied in the renovation of 
 the article.* This would be a serious inconvenience to 
 those who could manufacture a quill into a pen, but as 
 this was by no means an universal accomplishment, we 
 can form an idea how even these clumsy substitutes 
 found purchasers at such high prices. 
 
 Tom Hood, in his "Whims and Oddities," gives some 
 idea of the pre-steel-pen era : 
 
 " In times begone, when each man cut his quill, 
 
 With little Perryian skill ; 
 
 What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade 
 Appeared the writing instruments, home made ! 
 WTiat pens were sliced, hewed, hacked, and haggled out, 
 Slit or unslit, with many a various snout, 
 Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby, 
 
 Humpy and stubby ; 
 Some capable of ladye-billets neat, 
 Some only fit for ledger-keeping clerk, 
 And some to grub down, Peter Stubbs, his mark, 
 Or smudge through some illegible receipt, 
 Others in florid caligraphic plans, 
 Equal to ships, and wiggy heads, and swans ! 
 To try in any common inkstands then, 
 With all their miscellaneous stocks, 
 
 To find a decent pen, 
 Was like a dip into a lucky-box ; 
 You drew, and got one very curly, 
 And split like endive in some hurly-burly ; 
 The next unslit, a square at end, a spade ; 
 The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made ; 
 
 * The writer recollects the tedious waiting for the patient usher, who passed 
 from desk to desk with his penknife, mending pens, and paying very little at- 
 tention to anything else ; also the wonder felt and expressed at the first sight 
 of steel nibs, and how they dug into the paper. 
 
32 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 The fourth a broom ; the fifth of no avail, 
 Turned upwards, like a rabbit's tail ; 
 And last, not least, by way of a relief, 
 A stump that Master Richard, James, or John 
 Had tried his candle cookery upon, 
 Making ' roast beef ! ' ' 
 
 These early pens were at first made from a piece of 
 steel formed into a tube, and filed into the shape of a 
 pen by hand, the joint of the two edges forming the slit. 
 Afterward a blank was roughly punched out, filed into 
 shape, and the slit marked out with a chisel while the 
 blank was in a soft state. It was then shaped, hardened, 
 tempered, ground, and the slit cracked through by 
 means of a hammer and tool at the place where the mark 
 had been made. The engravings of the pens by Ed- 
 wards, which appeared in Wrightsons Directory, 1823, 
 seem to indicate that the piercing, side cutting and slit- 
 ting were executed by mechanical appliances. Possibly, 
 Edwards was not a manufacturer himself, but had his 
 pens made for him by Mitchell. 
 
 In the pre-steel-pen era there were many attempts 
 made to supersede quills. In " Peveril of the Peak," 
 Mistress Chiffinch speaks of her diamond pen. There 
 was a pen the nibs of which were of ruby, set in gold, 
 made by Doughty. Dr. Wollaston made gold pens tipped 
 with rhodium. 
 
 During the time the early makers of steel pens were 
 perfecting the article, several experimenters were offering 
 to the public writing instruments made from various 
 materials. Bramah patented " quill nibs" made by split- 
 ting quills and cutting the semi-cylinders into sections, 
 which were shaped into pens, and adapted to be placed 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 33 
 
 in a holder. Hawkins and Mordan, in 1823, made use 
 of horn and tortoise-shell, which was cut into "nibs," 
 softened in water, and small pieces of ruby and other 
 precious stones were then embedded in by pressure. In 
 this way they insured durability and great elasticity. In 
 order to give stability to the nib thin pieces of gold or 
 other metal were affixed to the tortoise-shell. 
 
 Looking back at the early operations of the trade, and 
 considering that steel pens were made by hand at the 
 beginning of the present century, we can scarcely under- 
 stand why the idea of cheapening the production by the 
 application of labor-saving contrivances did not occur to 
 those inventive geniuses, the proprietors of Soho. Boul- 
 ton had expended some time in perfecting the manufact- 
 ure of steel buttons. That local Admirable Crichton, 
 Humphrey Jefferies, does not appear to have ever directed 
 his attention to the manufacture of this article, which has 
 now become a prime necessity of civilization. Yet we 
 hear of his success in the improvement of buttons, and 
 button-makers must have used the screw press and tools 
 for cutting out the blank and shaping it into form ; and 
 the process of slitting had been anticipated, for printers 
 had a brass rule-cutting machine in use, the cutters of 
 which bore a strong resemblance to those now used for 
 slitting steel pens. Like most of the pioneers in the path 
 of invention, the majority of the early makers of pens 
 were men whose business pursuits gave them no special 
 facilities for entering upon the manufacture of steel pens. 
 The progress of the trade from 1829 (with the exception 
 of the period when Perry and Gillott first commenced 
 advertising) had been gradual, but satisfactory. In one 
 of Gillott's early advertisements, he stated that he made 
 
34 THE STORY OF THE 
 
 490,361 gross in 1842, and 730,031 in 1843. This was 
 an advance by leaps and bounds which has not since 
 been maintained. Although Mason commenced making 
 pens for Perry in the year 1828, yet it was not till 1861 
 that his name became known in England as a steel-pen 
 maker. Many merchants in Birmingham and Wolver- 
 hampton, who purchased steel rings from him, had no 
 idea that he was a maker of pens ; yet on the Continent 
 of Europe pens bearing his name were eagerly sought 
 after. Subsequent to 1861 he was associated with Perry, 
 until, in 1876, the trade-marks, patents, etc., were pur- 
 chased by a limited liability company, who now, under 
 the name of " Perry & Co.," have become 'the largest 
 manufacturers of pens in the world. 
 
 At the present time (1889) there are thirteen firms en- 
 gaged in the trade in Birmingham, and they make up 
 about twenty-four tons of steel per week into pens and 
 penholder tips. Making due allowance for the material 
 used in the latter article, this consumption would prob- 
 ably represent a weekly average production of 200,000 
 grosses of pens. The Birmingham penmakers employ 
 about 3,500 women and girls, and 650 men and boys ; 
 and besides these the number of women and girls work- 
 ing at making paper boxes, in which the pens are packed, 
 would probably exceed 300. In addition to this there 
 are several mills where steel is rolled for those firms who 
 have not sufficient power on their own premises, but 
 there is a difficulty in stating the number of hands em- 
 ployed. The wages of the females range from four shil- 
 lings to fifteen shillings ; those of the boys from five 
 shillings to ten shillings. The unskilled workmen earn 
 from twelve shillings to twenty-four shillings ; and skilled 
 
INVENTION OF STEEL PENS. 35 
 
 men, or toolmakers, command wages varying from 
 twenty-five shillings to three pounds. Most of the fe- 
 males work upon the piece-work system, but the men 
 are paid weekly wages. 
 
 In 1835, upon the authority of a writer in the Me- 
 chanics Magazine, two tons two hundred weight of steel 
 were used weekly in the manufacture of pens. Mr. Sam: 
 Timmins made an approximate estimate that six and 
 a half tons of steel were used per week for steel pens in 
 1849 ; and again, in 1886, he gives the amount of steel 
 as having increased to ten tons. It is at all times diffi- 
 cult to form an accurate estimate of the quantity of 
 material used, but we believe we are within the mark 
 in putting down the present consumption of steel at 
 twenty-two tons weekly. From this it would appear 
 that the trade has doubled its production during the last 
 twenty years. Besides these Birmingham houses there 
 are some four or five manufactories on the Continent, and 
 two in the United States, but their productions have not 
 increased in the same ratio as that of their English rivals. 
 
 During the last twenty years a great improvement has 
 taken place in the style of boxes and labels in which 
 the pens are packed. Formerly (with the exception of 
 the goods issued by Gillott and Sommerville) most of 
 the pens were sold in boxes of the plainest description; 
 now the covers or labels are printed in a number of 
 colors from elaborate designs, by first-class artists, and 
 in some cases the boxes are ornamented with well-exe- 
 cuted portraits of royal, political, literary, or artistic 
 celebrities. There are many peculiarities connected with 
 the public taste as manifested in the demand for pens. 
 The Germans use a greater variety of patterns than any 
 
36 THE STOR Y OF THE 
 
 other nation. The English taste is more restricted, and 
 is generally confined to articles of the plainer shapes. 
 Autocratic Russia and democratic America make use of 
 the fewest patterns. By a regulation of the Imperial 
 Government, pens in boxes, bearing portraits of the Rus- 
 sian royal family are prevented from entering the coun- 
 try, and in America public taste does not favor a demand 
 for portrait boxes. By a law which came into operation 
 the ist of January, 1886, no pens can be imported into 
 Russia bearing the name of a Russian firm. The prob- 
 able purpose of this law was to encourage the establish- 
 ment of a Russian manufactory. At present there are 
 no pen works in Russia. An attempt was made in Mos- 
 cow, in 1876-8, to manufacture steel pens, but the experi- 
 ment proved a failure. The Germans and French are 
 the largest buyers of first-class pens, but the Italians are 
 content with articles of the commonest character. The 
 chief demand for three-pointed pens comes from Spain. 
 At present the demand for steel pens is chiefly confined 
 to European nations and their descendants. The great 
 Asiatic nations still write with pens made from reeds, or 
 camel-hair pencils. A few of the natives of India and 
 Japan, and some of the subjects of the Sultan and 
 Khedive are beginning to make use of steel pens adapted 
 to the peculiarities of their writing. From this it would 
 appear that the possibilities of the progress of the trade 
 in the future are very favorable ; but in the meantime 
 its productions are scattered over the globe, and even 
 in some of the darkest corners of the earth pioneers of 
 civilization are to be found transcribing the results of 
 their experience with the aid of that great factor of 
 nineteenth-century progress an English Steel Pen. 
 
THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES 
 OF STEEL PENS. 
 
 THE steel from which the greater part of the metallic 
 pens are manufactured comes from Sheffield. Notwith- 
 standing the many names given by the venders of steel 
 pens to the material from which they are manufactured 
 there are but two sorts good and bad and therefore 
 Peruvian, Damascus, Amalgam, and Silver Steel are 
 but fancy names. As a matter of fact, where a number 
 of prefixes are used to,describe the quality of an article 
 it is generally found to have no claim to any of them. 
 
 The raw material is received from Sheffield in sheets 
 six feet in length, one foot five inches in width, and 23 
 or 26 Birmingham wire-gauge in thickness. The first 
 operation is the cutting of these sheets into strips of con- 
 venient width. They are then packed in an oblong iron 
 box, placed with the open top downward in another box 
 of the same material, and the interstices are filled up 
 with a composition to exclude the air. The boxes are 
 placed in a muffle, where they remain until they have 
 gradually attained a dull red heat, and the muffle is al- 
 lowed to gradually cool, or else the boxes are placed in 
 a cooling chamber. When the boxes have been reduced 
 to a temperature which will admit of their being handled, 
 the contents (technically called a charge) are emptied 
 out. Now, it will be found that the strips of steel are 
 
38 THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES 
 
 covered with bits of small scale, sticking to them like 
 a loose skin, and if this were not removed before the 
 next process rolling the steel, instead of being per- 
 
 fectly smooth, would 
 be marked with a num- 
 ber of indentations, 
 rendering it very un- 
 sightly. In order to 
 get rid of this excres- 
 cence, the strips are 
 immersed in a bath 
 of diluted sulphuric 
 acid, which loosens 
 the scale, and are then 
 placed in wood barrels 
 
 ' tO 
 
 ROLLING THE STEEL. 
 
 bles and water are 
 
 added. The barrels are kept revolving until the whole 
 of the scaly substance has been removed and the strips 
 have assumed a silver-gray appearance. The steel is 
 now ready for manipulation in the rolling mill, where 
 it is passed between successive pairs of rolls until it has 
 been reduced to the required gauge, and this operation 
 has to be performed with such nicety that a variation of 
 one thousand part of an inch in the thickness of the 
 strip would make such an alteration in the flexibility of 
 the pens made from it as to cause considerable dissatis- 
 faction to the purchasers of the article. 
 
 The steel on leaving the mill is conveyed to the gaug- 
 ing room, and it will be found to have increased to three 
 times its original length, and now appears with a bright 
 surface. Hitherto the operations have been conducted 
 
OF STEEL PENS. 
 
 39 
 
 by men and boys ; but now, in the course of manu- 
 facture, the pens will enter on a series of processes in 
 which the quick and delicate fingers of women and girls 
 play an important part. The strips of steel are now 
 given out to the cutters. The Toolmaker, who, as a 
 rule, both makes and sets the tools, has placed in what 
 is known as a bolster a die, having a hole perforated 
 through- it of the exact shape of the blank to be cut ; 
 and attached to the bottom of the screwed bolt of the 
 press is a punch, also bearing the exact shape of the 
 
 blank. The girl with her left hand introduces one of 
 the strips of steel at the back of the press, and, pulling 
 the handle toward her with the right hand, the screw 
 
4 THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES 
 
 descends, driving the punch into the bed, and in so 
 doing has perforated the strip of steel with a scissors-like 
 cut, making a blank which falls through the opening in 
 the die into a drawer below. Now, with her left hand 
 she pulls the strip toward her until it is stopped by a 
 little projection called a guide ; and again the right 
 hand moves the handle, the screw descends, and another 
 blank is cut. The operation is continued until the whole 
 of one side of the strip is perforated ; it is then re- 
 versed and the other side treated in a similar way. If 
 you were to hold up the strip thus manipulated now 
 called scrap you would find that in some particular 
 part the perforations approach so nearly to each other 
 as to form a slight bar, which breaks easily between the 
 thumb and finger. This is rendered necessary from the 
 fact that steel scrap is worth only one-fifth of the value 
 of the raw material, and, as under the most favorable 
 conditions, the scrap averages one-third the original 
 weight given out for cutting, it behooves the manufact- 
 urer to reduce the scrap as much as practicable. If 
 these blanks are examined, a small V-shaped indentation, 
 looking like a defect, will be found upon the upper edge 
 of that part inserted in the holder. This small mark 
 plays an important part in the succeeding processes. To 
 a casual observer there does not appear much difference 
 between the two sides of the blank ; but, however well 
 the tools are made, that side of the blank which is up- 
 permost in cutting out will be rougher than the under 
 side. This mark enables the operator to distinguish at 
 a glance the smooth side, and by always keeping the 
 rough side upward the burr is polished off in a later 
 process. The blanks are now ready to be passed to the 
 
OF STEEL PENS. 
 
 next process marking. This operation is performed 
 by a female, with the aid of a stamp. The precise mark 
 required is cut upon a piece of steel, and, being placed 
 in the hammer of the stamp, the girl puts her right foot 
 into a stirrup attached to a rope, which is passed round 
 a pulley, and, pressing downward, causes the hammer .to 
 
 ascend. Taking a handful of blanks with her left hand, 
 by a dexterous motion she makes a little train of them be- 
 tween the thumb and finger in parallel order, presenting 
 the first in the most ready position to be passed to the 
 other hand. The right hand is brought toward the 
 left, and, taking a blank, places it with the point toward 
 the worker in a guide upon the bed of the stamp, then 
 
THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES 
 
 by suddenly letting the hammer descend a blow is struck 
 upon the blank, which gives an impression of the name 
 cut upon the punch. The quick fingers of the operator 
 pass backward and forward with such rapidity that a 
 
 skillful girl will mark 
 from two hundred to 
 two hundred and fifty 
 gross per day. If the 
 mark required is unu- 
 sually large, the mark- 
 ing process is deferred 
 until after the pen has 
 been pierced, in order 
 that the blank may be 
 annealed (or softened), 
 which takes the impres- 
 sion more readily than 
 the hard steel. 
 
 Now, in order to make a metallic pen suitable for writ- 
 ing it is necessary to consider some means of producing 
 elasticity, and also to devise some method by which the 
 smooth steel shall cause the ink to attach itself to the 
 pen. This is brought about by the next process -pierc- 
 ing. In this operation the tools are of a very delicate 
 character, and as the center pierce (the aperture in which 
 the slit terminates) is frequently of an ornamental design 
 the tools, being small, have to be made with great pre- 
 cision. The piercing punch and bed having been fixed 
 in a screw press, and an ingenious arrangement of guides 
 fastened thereto, the girl selects a blank from a tray on 
 her left hand, and, placing it in its proper position by the 
 aid of the guides, pushes the fly of the press from her, 
 
OF STEEL PENS. 
 
 43 
 
 the screw descends, driving the punch into the bed, and 
 the operation of piercing is completed. 
 
 The blanks are still moderately hard, and before they 
 can be made to take the shape of a pen it is necessary 
 that they should be softened, which is effected by the 
 process called annealing. The blanks having been freed 
 from the dust ard grease that has become attached to 
 them are carefully placed in round iron pots, which are 
 again inclosed in larger ones and covered over with 
 charcoal dust to prevent the entrance of gases, and put 
 into the muffle, heated to a dull red, and then allowed to 
 cool. 
 
 The blanks are now soft and pliable, readily taking the 
 various shapes into which pens are made by the next 
 process, called raising. 
 This operation is per- 
 formed by the aid of 
 a punch and die fitted 
 into a screw -press. 
 The punch is fitted in- 
 to a contrivance called 
 a false nose, fixed in 
 the bottom of the screw 
 of the press ; and the 
 die or bed is placed 
 in a cylindrical piece 
 of steel (called a bol- 
 
 V RAISING OR SHAPING. 
 
 ster) with a groove cut 
 
 for the reception of the die, the bolster being fastened 
 to the bottom of the press by a screw underneath. 
 The punch and die being fixed so as to exactly fit each 
 other, the toolmaker places a small piece of tissue paper 
 
44 THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES 
 
 between them, takes an impression, examines it, and 
 proceeds to rectify any inequality in the pressure, so as 
 to insure perfection in the shape. This being accom- 
 plished, the toolmaker 
 fixes four pieces of 
 steel (called guides) to 
 the bolster in such po- 
 sitions that the oper- 
 ator is enabled to slide 
 the blank into the bed, 
 where it is held by the 
 guides till the punch 
 descends, forces the 
 blank into the bed, and 
 gives the pen its shape. 
 The article is now nar- 
 
 HARDENING. . .^ . 
 
 rower than it was in its 
 
 blank form, and the girl pushes it through the tools with 
 a small stick held in the hand with which she works the 
 press handle, while with the other hand she places another 
 blank in its position in the bed. 
 
 The pen is now shaped or raised, but it is still soft, 
 and consequently another process is necessitated hard- 
 ening. This is effected by placing the pens in thin layers 
 in round pans with lids. They are placed in the muffle 
 for a period varying from twenty to thirty minutes, dur- 
 ing which time they have acquired a bright red heat. The 
 workman then withdraws them and empties the contents 
 into a large bucket immersed in a tank of oil. The 
 bucket is perforated at the bottom, and being elevated, 
 the oil drains off. The pens are next placed in a per- 
 forated cylinder, which, being set in motion, revolves and 
 
OF STEEL PENS. 
 
 45 
 
 drains off the remainder of the oil. The pens are still 
 greasy, and as brittle as glass ; and in order to free them 
 from the grease they are again placed in perforated 
 buckets and immersed in a tank of boiling soda water. 
 After they are freed from the grease the pens are put 
 into an iron cylinder, which is kept revolving over a char- 
 coal fire until they are softened or tempered down to the 
 special degree required. In this process the workman is 
 guided by the color, which indicates the varying tem- 
 perature of the metal of which the articles are made. 
 Brittleness has given place to pliability, but the pens are 
 black in color and scratch at the point, and to remedy 
 this defect they are subjected to the next process 
 scouring. In order to do this the pens are dipped in a 
 bath of diluted sulphuric acid called pickle which frees 
 the articles from any ex- 
 traneous substances they 
 may have acquired in 
 the hardening and tem- 
 pering processes. This 
 requires to be done with 
 great care, or the acid 
 would injure the steel. 
 The pens are then placed 
 in iron barrels with a 
 quantity of water and 
 small pebbly-looking 
 material. This latter 
 
 SCOURING OR BARRELING. 
 
 material is composed of 
 
 annealing pots broken and ground fine enough to pass 
 readily through a fine riddle. The barrel being set in 
 motion, the pens are scoured for periods varying from 
 
THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES 
 
 five to eight hours, and are placed again in barrels with 
 dry pot for about the same period, after which they are 
 put into other barrels together with a quantity of dry 
 sawdust. On being taken 'out of these barrels the body 
 
 of the pen has acquired 
 a bright silver color, 
 and the point has been 
 rounded. 
 
 The article has now 
 the shape and appear- 
 ance of a finished pen, 
 and yet it possesses 
 none of its character- 
 istics, and, if tried, will 
 be found to have no 
 more action than a 
 lead pencil, as it is de- 
 ficient in that impor- 
 tant part of a writing instrument the slit. Before being 
 slit the pen is ground between the centre pierce and the 
 point. This process is performed by girls, with the aid 
 of what is called a " bob " or " glazer." The " bob " is a 
 circular piece of alder wood about ten and a half inches 
 in diameter and half an inch in width. Round this a 
 piece of leather is stretched and dressed with emery. 
 A spindle is driven through the centre, and the two ends 
 placed in sockets. The " bob " is set in motion by means 
 of a leather band, and the girl holding a pen firmly, with 
 a light touch grinds off a portion of the surface. 
 
 This operation being completed, the last and most 
 important mechanical operation has to be performed 
 slitting. The tools with which this process is effected 
 
 GRINDING. 
 
OF STEEL PENS. 
 
 47 
 
 are two oblong pieces of steel about an inch and a 
 half long, three-eighths of an inch thick, and an inch 
 and a quarter wide. These are called the cutters, and 
 upon the preparation and setting of these the successful 
 issue of the proc- 
 ess depends. The 
 edges of these 
 cutters are equal 
 in delicacy to the 
 cutting edge of 
 a razor, but the 
 shape is more 
 suggestive of a 
 portion cut from 
 the thickest part 
 of a large pair of 
 shears. The cut- 
 ter being fixed 
 in the press, a 
 pair of guides 
 are screwed on 
 either side, and a 
 small tool called 
 a table, or rest, 
 being attached to 
 the contrivance 
 called a bolster, 
 which holds the 
 bottom cutter, the operator takes a pen, places it on the 
 table, pushes the point up toward the guide, pulls the 
 handle, the upper cutter descends, meets the lower one, 
 and the process of slitting is completed. 
 
48 TIfE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES 
 
 Now, although this operation completes the mechan- 
 ical processes of pen making, the article is by no means 
 finished. If you examine the pen now you will find that 
 the outer edge of each point is smooth, while the inside 
 edges which have just been made by the slit are sharp 
 and scratch. To remove this defect the operation of 
 " barreling " has to be again resorted to. The pens are 
 again placed in the iron barrels with pounded pot, kept 
 revolving from five to six hours, and finally polished in 
 sawdust. 
 
 The pens are now of a bright silver-steel color and 
 perfectly smooth, but as they are required in various 
 tints, they are colored and afterward varnished to pre- 
 vent rust. To accomplish the first of these results the 
 articles are placed in a copper or iron cylinder and kept 
 revolving over a coke fire until the requisite tint is ob- 
 tained, the color depending upon the temperature of the 
 cylinder. If the pens are intended to be lacquered they 
 are placed in a solution of shellac dissolved in methyl- 
 ated spirits. The spirit is drained off, and the pens are 
 placed in wire cylinders and kept revolving until the 
 action of the air dries the lacquer. They are then scat- 
 tered upon iron trays, inserted in an oven, and the heat 
 diffuses the lacquer equally over the surface of the pens, 
 so that when they have cooled down they have a glossy 
 appearance, which gives to them an air of finish and 
 prevents rust. 
 
 The pen is now finished as far as manufacturing 
 processes are concerned, yet before it can be offered 
 to the public it has to undergo a rigid examination 
 called "looking over." This is performed by trained 
 girls, and when the defective ones have been sorted 
 
OF STEEL PENS. 49 
 
 out the good pens are sent to the finished warehouse 
 to be put up into boxes. These boxes are of various 
 descriptions, adapted to suit the markets for which they 
 are intended. In many instances the labels which form 
 the covers of the boxes are elaborately printed from first- 
 class designs, and some of them have highly-finished 
 steel engravings of royal personages and celebrities in 
 the scientific, literary, musical, and political world. The 
 quantities contained in these boxes vary with the coun- 
 tries for which they are intended ; for the manufactur- 
 ers study the wants of their customers, and do not offer 
 articles counted in dozens to people who reckon by tens. 
 We have now traced the manufacture of this little 
 article from its beginning as a plain piece of steel 
 through all its stages until it has developed into that 
 indispensable requisite of daily life a pen. 
 
SOME PROCESSES IN PEN MAKING. 
 
 MARKING. PIERCING. EMBOSSING. RAISING. GRINDING. SLITTING. 
 
HISTORY OF THE PERRYIAN PEN 
 WORKS. 
 
 THE firm of Messrs. Perry & Co., London, was founded 
 in the year 1824 by Mr. James Perry, who carried on 
 business originally in Manchester, then in London. Mr. 
 James Perry died in the year 1843. Mr. Stephen Perry, 
 who conducted the business afterward in partnership 
 with Mr. Hayes and others, died in the year 1873, 
 and was succeeded by his sons, Messrs. Joseph John 
 and Lewis Henry Perry. The firm of Perry & Co. was 
 known all over Europe as the house which first intro- 
 duced to the commercial world steel pens of a superior 
 quality, and in many countries steel pens are now known 
 under the general denomination of " Perry pens." The 
 first pens were manufactured by Perry & Co. in London, 
 principally from flattened or ribbon steel wire, and in 
 the year 1828 Mr. Josiah, afterward Sir Josiah, Mason, 
 then a manufacturer of steel split rings, produced steel 
 pens so much superior to the pens made up to that 
 period that Messrs. Perry & Co. entered into contracts 
 with him for the sole supply of all the pens they might 
 require ; this connection continued up to the time of the 
 formation of this company. In the meantime, Messrs. 
 Perry & Co. had also introduced the sale of elastic bands 
 and pencil cases ; the production of the latter was con- 
 fided to Mr. W. E. Wiley, who, in the year 1850, began 
 
5 2 HIS TOR Y OF THE 
 
 the manufacture first of gold pens, afterward of pencil 
 cases. Messrs. Perry & Co. also contracted with Mr. 
 Wiley for the purchase of all the pencil cases they might 
 dispose of, and thus Mr. Wiley's works assumed gigantic 
 proportions. Mr. Alfred Sommerville, who had been 
 connected with the steel-pen trade since its infancy, 
 
 THE LATE SIR JOSIAH MASON. 
 
 established the firm of A. Sommerville & Co. in the year 
 1851. Although he, in the year 1857, began manufact- 
 uring steel pens in connection with a partner, he like- 
 wise contracted with Mr. Josiah Mason for a superior 
 class of steel pens, principally intended for the Conti- 
 
PERRYIAN PEN WORKS, 53 
 
 nental markets, and many of which were either his own 
 invention or suggested by him. Mr. Sommerville desir- 
 ing to retire from business, Sir Josiah Mason purchased 
 his trade in the year 1870, but continued to carry it on 
 under the old style of A. Sommerville & Co. These 
 four businesses being so intimately connected and de- 
 pendent upon each other, some gentlemen of eminence 
 in the manufacturing town of Birmingham decided, in 
 conjunction with some of the leading proprietors, to 
 establish a limited company, for the purpose of uniting 
 and amalgamating inseparably the various establishments, 
 and thus the company of "Perry 6 Co., Limited" was 
 formed. 
 
 On the spot forming the principal entrance to the 
 works, Mr. Samuel Harrison, in the year 1778, founded 
 a manufactory in which he carried on his invention of 
 steel split rings ; but Mr. Harrison, who was an ingenious 
 mechanic, also manufactured mathematical instruments, 
 some of which were used by Dr. Priestley in his re- 
 searches, and on one occasion he made a steel pen for 
 Dr. Priestley, probably the first steel pen ever produced. 
 Mr. Josiah Mason succeeded to the business of Mr. Har- 
 rison in 1823, and in 1828 began the manufacture of 
 steel pens. For several years he gave his whole atten- 
 tion to improvements in the manufacture of steel pens, 
 and Mr. Perry took out several most important patents 
 for the improvement of steel pens, many of which have 
 not been surpassed in ingenuity or in utility, and the 
 principal among them, the so-called " double patent," is 
 universally applied by the pen trade to a great number 
 of pens to this very day. In 1842 Mr. Mason's atten- 
 tion was absorbed by the process of electro-plating and 
 
54 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 gilding, at that time invented and carried on by Mr. Elk- 
 ington, in partnership with whom he founded the great 
 firm of Elkington, Mason & Co. For some years the 
 production of pens flagged, but in 1852 a nephew of Sir 
 Josiah Mason, Mr. Isaac Smith (deceased in 1868), gave 
 a new stimulus to the manufacture of pens, and from that 
 time the production gradually increased until it assumed 
 its present proportions. The manufactory now covers 
 nearly two acres ; it occupies a whole square and fronts 
 four streets. In the building fronting Lancaster Street 
 
 THE BIRMINGHAM FACTORY. 
 
 (five stories high) the offices, warehouses and store- 
 rooms of finished goods are distributed. The under- 
 ground floor forms a huge machine shop, in which all the 
 presses, rolls, and general iron and machine work em- 
 ployed throughout the manufactory are produced by 
 skillful mechanics. Behind the front building there are 
 several courtyards and quadrangles, in the largest of 
 which are placed in a row five double-flue boilers, each 
 20 feet long by 7 feet diameter, working at a pressure of 
 
PERRYIAN PEN WORKS. 
 
 55 
 
 55 Ib. to the square inch, supplying the steam power 
 both for propelling the steam engines and for heating the 
 manufactory. In the rolling mill, measuring 64 by 38 
 feet, three double-cylinder engines, working up to 293 
 indicated horse 
 power, give mo- 
 tion to 1 8 pairs 
 of rolls, rolling 
 between four to 
 six tons of steel 
 per week. The 
 largest work- 
 shops are the slit- 
 ting and grinding 
 rooms, 64 by 38 
 feet, the latter 24 
 feet high. In the 
 slitting room 90 
 girls apply the 
 last mechanical 
 process to the 
 manufacture of 
 steel pens, in 
 slitting them by 
 presses of ingeni- 
 ous construction. 
 In the grinding 
 room more than 
 1 60 girls are busily employed cross and straight grinding 
 steel pens on wood cylinders covered with emery. The 
 room in which the finished pens are placed in boxes 
 measures 54 by 30 feet, and in it alone are employed 
 

 5 6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 more than 50 girls boxing and labeling steel pens, or 
 fitting penholder tips on handles of various materials, 
 principally of cedar. In that part of the building having 
 a frontage on Corporation Street there is a dining room 
 86 feet 6 inches long by 68 feet wide, fitted up with 
 tables to accommodate 600 people. Here the employes 
 are served with a warm dinner at prices varying from 
 2d. to 6d. At one end of the room there is a stage, 
 where dramatic entertainments and concerts are given 
 in the winter season by the workpeople. At the other 
 end there is a library, in a glazed partition, containing 
 about 2,000 volumes of standard works. These books 
 are issued to the hands employed by the firm free. One 
 of the important features of this manufactory is the em- 
 ployment of muffles heated by gas produced from Sie- 
 mens's gas generators. These muffles allow the heat to 
 be regulated to a nicety, and enable the company to 
 carry on the process of annealing and hardening to very 
 great perfection. 
 
 The manufacture of steel pens employs in all about 
 900 workpeople, the weekly production is 45,000 gross, 
 which quantity will shortly be increased to 50,000 gross, 
 per week. Six smaller steam engines are employed in- 
 dependently of those already mentioned in various parts 
 of the works. The manufacture of penholder sticks is 
 carried on in two separate buildings. Penholder sticks 
 were produced by Mr. Mason as far back as 1835, but 
 their manufacture had lapsed ; it was only resumed eight 
 years ago, since which time, by new and ingenious ma- 
 chinery, principally the inventions of Mr. W. E. Wiley, 
 the managing director, it has assumed proportions of 
 great magnitude. 
 
PERRYIAN PEN WORKS. 57 
 
 The pencil case and solitaire works carried on by Mr. 
 Wiley, first alone, and then in co-partnership with his son 
 in Graham Street, have now been transferred to Lan- 
 caster Street. 
 
 Pencil cases, first introduced by Messrs. Mordan & 
 Lund, in London, have undergone various changes and 
 
 THE LATE W. S. PERRY. 
 
 improvements, the principal of which was a lead holder 
 passing through the point of the pencil case, which was 
 slit for that purpose. This invention was patented by 
 Mr. Wiley in the year 1857, and created a complete revo- 
 lution in the pencil-case trade, as it enabled the manu- 
 
5 8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 facturers to use a thicker and longer lead, which could 
 be propelled and withdrawn at will and would last in 
 daily use more than six months. This patented mechan- 
 ism was introduced into cases made from hard wood, 
 bone and ivory, but since the year 1868 a composition 
 called aluminium gold, so resembling gold that it can- 
 not be distinguished from it, and resisting the effects of 
 oxidation, consequently free from tarnish, made a fur- 
 ther revolution in the pencil-case trade, enabling the 
 million to possess an elegant and highly-wrought pencil 
 case at a very moderate price. Messrs. Perry & Co., of 
 London, gave to this manufacture publicity in every part 
 of Europe, and the quantities produced and sold are 
 incredible. 
 
 In 1874 a new patent was added to the many inven- 
 tions for which this establishment was famous. Its pur- 
 pose was to produce a solitaire stud made in two parts, 
 s o as to enable its ready application without the trouble 
 of passing a button of large diameter through a small 
 buttonhole. A self-acting steel spring is fixed in the 
 upper part of the stud, and snaps as soon as inserted 
 into the lower part, where a slight pressure on two pro- 
 jections releases the springs and permits the separation 
 of the two parts. These solitaires are manufactured of 
 gold, silver, and a variety of other metals, the principal 
 of which is gold plate. There are now more than five 
 hundred patterns in existence, and this useful manufact- 
 ure grows daily in extension. Perry & Co.'s paper 
 binders, an article now universally used for fastening 
 together loose papers, cloth patterns, etc., are produced 
 in infinite styles and sizes, principally by self-acting 
 machinery. 
 
PERR YIAN PEN WORKS. 
 
 59 
 
 The_totaLnumber of workpeople employed in the com- 
 pany's manufactories exceeds 1,300. 
 
 The business of Perry & Co. was carried on for more 
 than forty years at 37 Red Lion Square, London, but the 
 increase of business and the reconstruction of London 
 required that a more central position should be found for 
 the development of the commercial department of the 
 company. Large and handsome warehouses having been 
 constructed on the Holborn Viaduct, the company trans- 
 ferred their London depot to a building five stories high 
 on the side fronting the Holborn Viaduct and eight 
 stories high at the 
 back. In this im- 
 mense warehouse 
 are stored not only 
 the produce of the 
 manufactories of 
 this company, but 
 also special articles 
 for which this firm 
 has been famous for 
 the last thirty years, 
 principally the elastic or endless bands, patented by Mr. 
 Daft and Mr. Stephen Perry, and originally introduced 
 by Perry & Co. in conjunction with Mclntosh & Co., 
 afterward in conjunction with Warne & Co. Perry's 
 Royal Aromatic Bands are now an indispensable article, 
 and may be procured in every city of the world. Every 
 fancy article required by stationers can be found in these 
 vast stores. An illustrated price current which appears 
 monthly, and which numbers more than 120 pages, gives 
 a fair idea of the variety of articles of which samples and 
 
 LONDON HOUSE, HOLBORN VIADUCT. 
 
60 THE PERRYIAN PEN WORKS. 
 
 stock can be found ready for daily delivery. The in- 
 crease of business has been so rapid that the company 
 found it necessary to lease the adjoining premises, which 
 is stored with some of the two thousand articles forming 
 the staple trade of the London depot, and the principal 
 of which are the following : American Letter Files, Clips 
 (now manufactured in Lancaster Street), Marking and 
 other Inks, Aromatic Bands, Audascript Pens, Bostonite 
 Goods, Cigar Lighters, Copying Ink and Copying Ink 
 Powder, Copying Ink Pencils, Copying Presses, Corru- 
 gated Imperial Bands, Essence of Ink, Grease Extractors, 
 India Rubber for Erasing, Ink and Pencil Erasers, Ink 
 Extractors, Patent and other Inkstands in every variety, 
 Key Rings, Letter Clips, Letter Files, Metallic Books, 
 Paper Binders, Pencil Point Protectors, Pencils and 
 Pencil Cases, Penholders, Pen Knives, Pen Racks, Gold 
 Pens, Portfolios, Presses, Scotch Tartan Fancy Goods, 
 Solitaires or Sleeve Links, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 This establishment is under the exclusive management 
 of Mr. Joseph J. Perry, managing director. 
 
 [ The illustrations in this work are engraved from pen- 
 and-ink sketches executed by Walter Langley with a Perry s 
 No. 25 pen.~\ 
 
PERRY & COMPANY'S 
 
 CARBONIZED 
 
 STEEL PENS 
 
 ' THE LEADING PATTERNS FOR CORRESPONDENTS, 
 ACCOUNTANTS AND SCHOOLS. 
 
 PER GROSS. 
 
 17, $0.50 
 
 102, .50 
 
 SCHOOL 
 
 VIADUCT 
 
 ELASTIC 
 
 CALIGRAPHIC 
 
 HIGHLAND 
 
 GLADSTONE 
 
 BANK 
 
 61 
 
PERRY & COMPANY'S CARBONIZED STEEL PENS. 
 
 PER GROSS. 
 
 107, $0.50 
 
 117, .75 
 
 127, .85 
 
 135, .60 
 
 137, .50 
 
 151, 1.40 
 
 338, .75 
 
 427, .60 
 
 753, .75 
 
 831, .70 
 62 
 
 RIB CALIGRAPHIC 
 SEMINARY 
 ELASTIC 
 
 Ill" 
 
 i" RAVEN BLACK 
 
 THE FALCON 
 
 THREE-POINTED 
 
 PRINCE OF WALES 
 
 BLACK SWAN 
 
 BROADWAY 
 
 California 
 
PERRY & COMPANY'S CARBONIZED STEEL PENS. 
 
 PER GROSS. 
 
 1001, $0.50 
 
 1057, .50 
 
 1065, .75 
 
 1067, .75 
 
 1069, 1.50 
 
 1070, .50 
 1074, 1.00 
 
 COMMERCIAL 
 
 LADIES' FALCON 
 
 The 
 
 Celebrated "D" 
 
 Turned-Up Point 
 
 OBLIQUE 
 
 ATTORNEY 
 
 RODND WRITING 
 
 These pens are all packed in illuminated boxes, containing 
 i gross, and will be sent postpaid on receipt of price named. 
 A complete sample card will be sent postpaid on receipt of 
 20 cents. 
 
 SOLE AGENTS FOR U. S. 
 
 IVISON, BLAKEMAN & COMPANY 
 
 753 AND 755 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 
 
 63 
 
THE PENS 
 OF THE FUTURE 
 
 In Twelve Distinct Patterns 
 
 THIS NOVELTY (PROTECTED BY LETTERS PATENT) EM- 
 BODIES AN IMPROVEMENT WHICH BIDS FAIR TO MAKE 
 PENS MANUFACTURED ON THIS PRINCIPLE THE WRITING 
 INSTRUMENTS OF THE FUTURE. BY A PECULIAR PROCESS 
 THAT PORTION OF THE POINT WHICH COMES IN CONTACT 
 WITH THE PAPER IS SHAPED OUT OF THE THICKNESS OF 
 THE METAL INTO A ROUNDED FORM, WHICH ENABLES THE 
 WRITER TO GLIDE OVER THE ROUGHEST PAPER WITH EASE 
 AND RAPIDITY. 
 
 SOLD RETAIL BY ALL STATIONERS. 
 
 Wholesale Perry & Co., L'd, London. 
 
 SOLE AGENTS FOR UNITED STATES, 
 
 Ivison, Blakeman & Company, New York 
 
 6 4 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 TO ^ 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405 
 
 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk 
 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 NOV 1 3 198 
 
 I 83J 
 
 JETD FEB1 
 
 
 8 MM 
 
 AUG 2 C 2; 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 "FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 3/80 BERKELEY, CA 94720