Although it is not customary to write with a felt-tip pen at home, especially to sign, this is considered quite normal in many parts of the world.
The basic idea of the felt-tip pen, that a porous fibrous material tip connects to a cylinder filled with ink, was born in the 1910s. These „primitive felt tips” resembled a brush the most. The early rudimentary felt-tip pens were developed in the United States.
The beginning of felt-tip pen manufacturing
The company named „Japan Stationery Limited” was founded in 1946 in Tokyo by Yokio Horie, which initially produced crayons.
In the 1950s, part of the company's marketing campaign involved converting jeeps purchased from the American army into advertising vehicles, traveling the countryside and nearby countries, distributing free stationery to children. During the campaign, a rudimentary primitive felt-tip pen came into the hands of the founder of the company, which was later renamed Pentel, who saw potential in the brush-like writing instrument. The name ’pentel„ is a combination of the English words ”pen„ and ”tell,„ indicating that a pen is suitable for telling a story.
The Pentel felt-tip pen makes its debut
Since various brushes and brush pens have always been favored in Japanese calligraphy, the felt-tip pen was seen as an ideal tool in the island nation. Pentel embarked on a quest for the perfection characteristic of the Japanese, and over eight years developed the felt-tip pen called Pentel Sign. The world's first modern writing instrument that can be called a felt-tip pen, according to our current knowledge, debuted in 1962.
The success of the quest for perfection is well illustrated by the fact that the Pentel Sign, launched 60 years ago, is still on the market in unchanged form and thriving.
After the launch of the Sign, Pentel did not have a sufficiently large advertising budget to trumpet its novelty to the world. The felt-tip pen was passed from mouth to mouth and from hand to hand, and thus its news slowly spread around the world.
The Pentel Sign reached President Lyndon B. Johnson as a promotional product distributed at an American fair, who then ordered several dozen from a Washington wholesaler to sign his photographs. Following this, sales surged to such an extent that Pentel had to employ workers full-time, as most of the employees of the previously small local company were working part-time.
In the first year of its American appearance, Pentel sold two million Sign Pen felt-tip pens.
The pen was registered as NASA's official writing instrument in 1966, serving astronauts during the Gemini missions. The Sign even traveled to space that year in the pockets of astronauts Richard Gordon and Charles Conrad.
To be continued...
