How/with what did you start writing in the 1960s?

[psimpson130]

First fountain pens were Sheaffers in middle school (mid 60s). My ballpoint was the Bic retractable or a Parker Jotter. Never had an issue with a pen walking. College was mostly Parker Jotters and Shaeffers. Active duty military as an aviator was the Parker Jotter sets and I had a Scripto Pen and Pencil set which I carried for 20+years flying (still have them some almost 50 years from starting navigator school). After retiring from the AF used company provided ball points when I was doing Tech Support and when I went into the contracting roll, I had my Waterman Phineas fountain pen as well. Still had my Parker Jotters as a ball point when having to work with carbons.

[Runnin_Ute]

1964-1965 was my first grade year. We moved after the school year ended to a new home/area/school in the same school district where I would spend the remainder of my elementary/Junior High and High School years (2 high schools, 1 junior high, 3 different elementary schools due to growth mostly) I don't recall fountain pens at all. I do recall some of the wood top desks with hole for an ink well at some schools.

 

Likely pencil in elementary school - at least through third or fourth grade before I started using ballpoints. I recall buying at a local 7-11 store a Sheaffer fountain pen, that got confiscated by my parents within 48 hours due to the mess I made with it. I was probably between 8-10 years old at the time. My next fountain pen was in 1998. Bought my first mechanical pencil in high school. (~1974) Still have that one.  (.5 mm leads)

[InesF]

Entering Volksschule in autumn 1967 I use a pencil and school books with lined paper. I can't remember when exactly we switched to fountain pens, was it summer 1968 or (latest) autumn 1968 (in the second class). However, I received my Pelikano 2 for Christmas 1967, long before I was allowed to use it. That was not too bad for me, because I didn't like how it looked.  At the same time I was a bit proud of "being old enough to use a fountain pen and not longer have to stick with the pencil".

I used the Pelikano 2 from these early days during Hauptschule, during Technical Highschool, during some years in my first job and during the first year at University. It was around 1984 to 1985 when I bought my second fountain pen, a Waterman Maestro (which I used for the following 25 years).  

 

PS: the Pelikano 2 is still fully functional and in use (rarely), but the Maestro had suffered from heavy use, is scratched, has a loose cap, has lost the gold plating from the nib, has corroded clip and cap band and the tipping is partly worn away.

[I-am-not-really-here]

Crayons and chalk in kindergarten then onto #2 pencils in grade school, pencils plus some Bic ballpoints in middle school then graduated to mechanical pencils in high school and college.  Learned penmanship aka cursive with a pencil.  At work, it was pencils, ballpoints, and rollerballs.  Then computer keyboards.  Never saw a fountain pen until five years ago when, on a whim, I bought a basic cheap Faber Castell.

[Beechwood]

First memory of writing at school was having to write 100 lines during break in either pencil or fountain pen, my crime was that I did not know how to spell the word holiday, I put an A after the I. I was six years old, the pen was a Parker 45.

 

School days was a succession of pens, more 45s, Parker Junior, what is now called a Sheaffer Dolphin, then I bought for myself a Parker Duofold Senior  in dark red when I was 11 years old, at 17 I dropped the pen and bent the nib, Arthur Twydle repaired (actually not that well) and offered to pay a very large sum of money for the pen which I turned down, I cannot remember why I turned down his offer which was more then the pen would be worth today. I gave the pen and others  to people on FPN when I lost the use of my right arm, thankfully just for a year.

 

I cannot remember any interesting pens during schooldays, I did some pen repairs, I had a nice sideline in repairing Parker 51s, the main issue was hood alignment and bent clips from being forced over school blazer pockets.  Most boys had Conway Stewarts or Osmiroids but they didn't last long, thrown into the bottom of a leather satchel with text and exercise books thrown on to top of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Blue Inked Fingers]

I started Grammer school in 1974. Fountain pens were compulsory, and I think mine was an Osmiroid. Most of my classmates used cartridges, but I always preferred ‘proper’ ink - still do! I remember it was a terrible pen though, eleven year old me was always struggling to get that thing to write properly. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

On 8/12/2024 at 4:12 PM, Format said:

Arthur Twydle repaired (actually not that well)

Arthur Twydle was a famous English Repairman, who taught Marshal and Oldfield how to repair pens and or was starting to write a book (I have the autographed second edition) with them before he died.

His son Peter has written some books on fountain pens.

[Chris1]

This brought back some old memories! In the 60's I'd have been 'junior' school and writing was in pencil, though as soon as I moved to senior school aged 11 a fountain pen was compulsory. You had to provide your own. We were told that ballpoints were an abomination, their ink is invisible and any work submitted in ballpoint will earn zero marks as there is nothing to be seen or marked! If your own fountain pen should fail you must continue in pencil before writing over the pencil later in ink. 

 

Cheap Platignum cartridge pens were most common but I did save the money to buy my own Parker which was jealously guarded at school lest it 'walk off' of its own accord.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Many folks are against pens with their ex-owner's names on them...but I bet they were not stolen.

Every single fountain pan and jotter I ever owned in school times were stolen...none lasted the year. None!

Had I been well enough off to pay twice the price of an Esterbrook, I could have my name engraved in it, and never left for the 40 year ball point desert.

[LeakyLandy]

On 7/13/2024 at 10:14 PM, dms525 said:

In California in the 1950's, elementary school writing was with pencils and poor quality lined paper provided by the school. In high school, I believe I wrote with ballpoint pens. I first got a fountain pen in college, and that was an Osmiroid for learning italic handwriting.

 

I do seem to recall some old school desks in my elementary school that had wells for holding ink bottles, so I assume in earlier times students used dip pens.

 

David

I was in California at that time. Each year in elementary school we got a new ballpoint, an ugly big pinkish thing shaped like a desk fountain pen. No cap. Kinda messy to write with, but I still liked it some. I first remember getting it in seventh grade.

[welch]

In the late 1950s, meaning 4th-6th grades in Maryland public schools, I wrote with Sheaffer school pens. Those are the clear-plastic torpedo -shaped cartridge pens. Mine was scratchy...unbearable. Maybe I had a "fine", or maybe that was just how they wrote. I got a medium-nib Parker 45 at Christmas, 1960. Ah...so smooth. I chipped off the pseudo-hood, and it went right on writing. It fell from the cap when I was riding my bike. Picked it up and it went on. I used it for everything until I graduated high school and gave it to my high school sweetheat, who said she wanted it. (She looked like Sophia Loren so, of course, I gave it. Fool of a 1960s teenager that I was, I missed that she was a superb artist and talented at painting, sketching, photography and nearly anything imaginative she took up.  Maybe the most talented person among our "beatnik" crowd.)

[welch]

And for how it was done in the "olden dayes" of the 1950s, the peak of the Golden Era of fountain pens: 

 

- learned our letters in kindergaten, printing with pencils on cheap paper. I remember that our desks, new ones in the "new wing" of our elementary school, each had a plastic ink jar in the top right-hand corner. The desks must have been built to receive ink from thos "master bottles" of Quinik or Skrip -- 32 ounce bottles -- that you can still find on eBay.

 

- practiced printing with pencils in first and second grade

 

- learned "cursive" beginning in third grade, looking at letters on a green strip above the blackboard. The cursive letters look exactly like those I read when helping AAAndrew with some research on a steel pen company that sued another about 1866. Both sides have left legal briefs, sribed by scriveners. Perfectly clear, regular letters as easy to read now as if written by typewriter forty years ago. Similar, that is, to how we were taught Blaner-Zauser or Palmer method in the 1950s.

 

- took up an "ink pen" in fourth grade, which meant fountain pens. 

 

- wrote with fountain pens thereafter. In junior high, a few kids began using ballpoints, and more than a few by the time we got to high school. About that time -- 1963 - 1966 -- my parents bought a used typewriter. We were still allowed to turn in hand-written essays, but more and more of us typed out papers. By college, everyone had a typewriter. The portable electric typewriter replaced the fountain pen as the writing instrument for essays and term papers. That's why I think the typewriter crushed the fountain pen, even more than did the ballpoint. 

[inkstainedruth]

@welch I have a few Sheaffer school pens, but have not been able to source converters for most of them.  The first one?  I don't recall it being at all scratchy....  The nib on it was marked "304" which I think I recall being told was an F nib.

My first semi-vintage pen and the first one with a gold nib was a 1960s era Parker 45 (also with a medium nib.  With the right ink in it (modern Quink Black was what I used when I first got it) it's like dancing on ice across the page, it's so smooth.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Lithium466]

1 hour ago, welch said:

That's why I think the typewriter crushed the fountain pen, even more than did the ballpoint. 

Interesting perspective! I do remember having to type papers and reports and whatever needed to be submitted for notation...and for the little handwriting that was left, many favoured ballpoints indeed.

[inkstainedruth]

Yeah, I know how you feel.  I remember typing the 20 page paper I wrote for my AP English class my last year in high school.  And having to figure out how to space the footnotes on the page (I didn't know about "endnotes" back then).  Of course it had something like over a hundred footnotes, because it was basically mostly word for word from the sources used. 

I never had to write ANY papers that long in college.... 

Of course, I was used to typewriters growing up -- my mom wrote something like 20+ novels on a Royal (manual) typewriter, before getting an IBM Electric.  And didn't go "digital" until after I got married (I remember the time she called me, all excited, with her little word processor thingie because she had figured out the find/replace feature on it (she picked one that wasn't too harsh to look at, and I think it had a blue/turquoise background and maybe yellow text).  And I was sort of rolling my eyes and going, "Yeah, Mom -- on my computer it's "Command-F"....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

3 hours ago, welch said:

The portable electric typewriter replaced the fountain pen as the writing instrument for essays and term papers. That's why I think the typewriter crushed the fountain pen, even more than did the ballpoint. 

Some of us couldn't write even before the collage electric typewriter that was so much easier than the manual....roll your shoulder and body to throw weight to make the key go down on the letters using a pinky.

At home we had your basic, war proof 40 pound Underwood. Not that I used that for anything at all.

As long as you kept the cap of your Bic in your mouth the Bic didn't get stolen like even your 'free' if your folks worked for the Government Skilcraft black ball point.

To be gentile....The Magpie syndrome is a genetic defect of mankind....xxit don't even have to shine, to be stolen. 

The propaganda of Skillcraft was we were helping the blind have a job.....the truth of starvation wages was never even whispered.....a lot of info never got out pre-net.

The Government giving away Skillcraft ball points is what almost killed fountain pens.

..........

I remember the day clearly. The shock of it all. That minute or so is still sharp in my mind;   very clearly when pop, took his Skillcraft ball point to work in his fatigue shirt pocket instead of the family Snorkel. I was 6 or 7. It was explained, the Skillcraft wrote on the greasy engine maintenance card wired to the landing craft motor. And if he broke it no big deal. Breaking the Snorkel was a very big deal.

[Waverly]

My family owned a grey Sheaffer Snorkel Valiant and I discovered it and a  bottle of Skrip ink with the reservoir bottle in about 1964. I eventually broke it, restored it myself about 10 years ago.  It is still sitting in my vintage pen box with my two other snorkels.  

[Boston Brian]

When I got my first pay packet at 17,_in 73' that's 1973, not 1873! I went to The Pen Shop in Belfast and bought a gold Parker 61 with a broad nib, and the life long love affair began and happily continues.  

[inkstainedruth]

Wow -- I've never seen a gold 61.  I have a number of 61s with the plastic bodies (most of which turned out to have -- or developed -- cracks ), and one Flighter.  

Currently have the one plastic body 61 which HASN'T developed cracks (yet, anyway) that I picked up a couple of weeks ago at an estate sale for super cheap.  Took several days of repeated soaking and flushing to get whatever residual ink in the capillary filler rehydrated enough to work, but now finding that it's a lovely writer (think that the nib might be an F, but not certain).

Sort of sad that Parker didn't use a better material for the plastic ones, because the capillary fill system is a MARVEL....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[vicpen123]

I go back to the fifties. We learned with pencils in exercise books. Then we graduated to dip pens using small ink wells in the desks. Not very successful as dip pens were rough and ready.

 

For some reason, we skipped fountain pens entirely and went straight to Bic ball points from then on through primary school, high school and university.

 

The only concession for good pens was using a Parker Jotter ball pen at uni and using a P"51" to write my student number only on my exam booklets. Got me through.