Croatia Claiming Invention Of Mechanical Pencil And Solid-Ink (?) Fountain Pen

[4lex]

I was looking up pen history and found this article on Croatian Tourist Board website:

 

 

 

The reason for the choice of the pen is simple and also an added acknowledgement for journalists. Croatia is the home of the fountain pen! According to the Croatian encyclopaedic dictionary, pen is the colloquial name for the fountain pen, ball point pen and mechanical graphite pencil. Where did this name come from? For their “father”, one time inhabitant of Zagreb, engineer Slavoljub Eduard Penkala (born in 1871 and died in 1922), one of the most famous inventors in the 20th century. Among eighty or so inventions in the areas of mechanics, chemistry, physics and aeronautics is also the invention of the first mechanical pencil and fountain pen. The first mechanical pencil in the world was patented by engineer Penkala on the 24th of January 2006 and the first fountain pen in the world with solid-ink, on the 31st of May 1907. The invention were patented in more than 35 countries in the world and manufacturing of the fountain pen and ball point pen in the Zagreb based factory grew. In the year 1906 the cooperation between engineer Slavoljub Penkala and Edmund Moster began, resulting in the “Penkala-Moster” company and in 1911 the creation of the joint stock company “Penkala – Edmund Moster” and construction of a new factory with a significantly larger capacity in the Zagreb street Branimirova. At the same time another member of the Moster family using joint capital opened a factory in Germany. Penkala’s pencils and fountain pens at this time were exported to over 70 countries in the world and in the time period between 1912 and 1926 it was one of the biggest factories of writing equipment in the world. And so at the beginning of the 20th century these revolutionary inventions and symbols of the journalist profession ventured into the world from Zagreb, Croatia and took it by storm.

First of all mechanical pencil was invented in 1822 in Great Britain and in the 50 years following invention more than 160 patents pertaining a variety of improvements were registered. So Idea that Slovakian engineer of Polish/Dutch heritage Penkala invented mechanical pencil is just ridiculous. And regarding solid-ink fountain pen all I can say, I don't know what that is but I don't believe Penkala invented it.

I get really annoyed when this fervently nationalist small countries claim inventions out of thin air and with no evidence what so ever.

[4lex]

And it gets worse, here they claim that even the word pen comes from the surname Penkala

http://history.info/on-this-day/1907-penkala-patents-his-fountain-pen/

 

 

In case you wondered, english word pen comes from Old French penne, which comes from Latin penna and late latin pen.

[jar]

If it makes folk happy and improves tourism, great.

[pankaj]

Pen from Penkala, really ? Let me check out with any Serb friend . Anyone ?

[dogpoet]

If it's a Croatian source, they probably take a (I suspect requited) dim view of Slovakians...

[4lex]

If it's a Croatian source, they probably take a (I suspect requited) dim view of Slovakians...

I think that because he lived in Croatia they claim him as their own. On their Wikipedia they also claim he invented ebonite (otherwise invented in 1844 in the US) and vacuum flask (otherwise known as thermos or Dewar bottle invented by Dewar in Scotland).

I give up.

[dogpoet]

I think the Serbs and Croats can get quite snotty about claiming this that or the other local for their own camp, so somebody who only lived in the area rather than being born in one country or the other is probably a lot safer to co-opt.

[proton007]

A FP must've been invented much earlier than the filing of these patents. Of course, only these patents could be considered as the 'official' claim of an invention.

 

I mean, dip pens were in use for centuries, it just feels strange not to consider someone somewhere may have thought of adding a reservoir on the pen itself, tried it, and perhaps also succeeded.

 

About the pencil, now this may have come later than pens...

[dogpoet]

I think the OP makes it clear that these claims are nonsense.

Probably why they started a thread complaining about these nonsense claims in scathing, contemptuous and incredulous tones, dig?