When did people start using blue rather than black ink?

[welch]

When did people start using blue rather than black ink?

 

My impression from manuscripts is that people always wrote in black ink. I have a philsophy text by Edgar S. Brightman that belonged to S. Paul Schilling in the '30s. (Two of Martin Luther King's most important teachers at Boston University). Schilling underlined and annotated the book...practically outlined it. In black, fine hand-writing.

 

Beyond manuscripts, I have more than a few early-20th-century books, all inscribed by their owners. All in black.

 

When did people start using blue?

 

Why?

 

Was black the only color that ink-makers made? Or has the writing faded from blue to substantially black?

 

I became "completely blue" when I started writing computer programs, in 1981: source listings are printed black, so my corrections stood out in blue. Further, I could use the same pen to write at meetings. My foggy memory is that there were about as many blue BIC ballpoints in 1970 as black ones.

 

So: when was the change? (If there was one.)

[zquilts]

I could well be incorrect but it seems to me that people began to use blue ink more when copiers became more common place. It was a was to differentiate a "real" signature more clearly. I work for the courts and it is still more common to use blue rather than black ink .

[inky]

I could well be incorrect but it seems to me that people began to use blue ink more when copiers became more common place. It was a was to differentiate a "real" signature more clearly. I work for the courts and it is still more common to use blue rather than black ink .

 

 

Ditto that, this was my first thought.

 

But you make a good point too welch about corrections and notations stand out more. Interestingly enough, banks and legal types always want you to sign everything in black. How can they tell the difference between the copy and the original? I think for banks this has to do with imaging of the docs.

Edited March 19, 2009 by inky

[Jerome Tarshis]

I am pretty sure blue ink goes back to before the mass production of fountain pens, and would have been manufactured as soon as the appropriate aniline dyes were available. Mid-nineteenth century at the latest. Prussian blue inks were used by Japanese printmakers before the middle of the nineteenth century. I think. I wouldn't want to guess the exact decade, but Prussian blue dye was a big new thing in woodblock printmaking.

 

In my family blue ink was used for social correspondence going back to the first quarter of the twentieth century. Presumably longer than that: I never saw my grandparents' generation's correspondence, but I did see correspondence of my parents' time.

 

I am inclined to believe that black ink or ferro-gallic blue-black ink would have been used for archival purposes, or for making business records, whereas social correspondence could be either in blue or in black, according to taste.

 

Blue looked less rigorous than black, and for some people it would seem worth making a distinction between writing on the job and writing on one's own time. I actually like black ink. But my parents and my aunts and uncles wrote letters in blue ink. They weren't thinking about photocopiers, and I don't think about photocopiers, either, those being machines that came along after I had formed my ideas about what is real and important. (Also true of ball-point pens.) I suppose if a lawyer ever told me plausibly that I *must* sign in blue, I'd do it, but that has never happened.

[JulioPB]

I know that in the USA all official document must be signed with blue ink, for avoiding photocopies.

 

Well, with currect scanners, it is impossible to forge documents. Every scanned document seems like original.

 

In Mexico the "official" ink is black. I always sign in blue.

 

[gyasko]

People didn't always use black. There was sepia, which some preferred.

 

The mass production of aniline dyes was the real biggie as far as the use of blue goes.

[TwilightFury]

I remember my Brazilian family members always wrote in blue ballpoint pen.

 

Personally, I think my girl-ish handwriting looks more fitted to blue ink. My dad has beautiful handwriting, and always uses black...but it goes with his handwriting more anyway.

 

I'd love to convert him to FPs but at 70 I don't think he'd go for it. Probably complain that it reminded him of his school daze. Sigh. Then again, who's to stop me from sending him a Lamy Vista Fine point and seeing what he makes of it? lol If it never gets used, oh well, not that expensive.

 

Never know with them older folks.

[WendyNC]

I know that in the USA all official document must be signed with blue ink, for avoiding photocopies.

 

Not exactly. North Carolina deeds still have printed on them a requirement that they be signed in black ink (for imaging purposes) although most counties now have imaging equipment that can handle blue ink. It's just in the last two years that I've permitted blue pens in my office (before that, they were immediately confiscated).

Edited March 19, 2009 by WendyNC

[Jimmy James]

My guess is that part of the issue is permanence. Iron gall ink dries black within hours/days, right? On top of that, a lot of blue inks are eradicated by sulfur. This seems to go more for the "main line" inks like Quink, Pelikan, etc. than it does for our modern saturated inks. I think it's likely blue was therefore associated with school work and being young while black was associated with sober adult work.

 

My guess is that the ballpoint became popular and it all went to heck.

[Frits B]

Never know with them older folks.

Thank you TwilightFury! I'll remember that.

Frits B, born March 4, 1939.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

When did people start using blue rather than black ink?

I agree that it was with the invention of aniline dyes in the mid 1850s. And then it got mixed with the gallotone inks for true blue/black ink. The really old ink was mostly carbon mixed with something to stick in on whatever you were writing on, not always paper.

 

I know that in the USA all official document must be signed with blue ink, for avoiding photocopies.

No, I've signed plenty of official documents in the U.S.A. using black ink. In fact I recall that my application for a marriage license was required to be filled out in black ink.

[BobR]

This is a great topic, one I've wondered about but never got around to posting. But my question is--how did blue ink become so popular as the main alternative to black? Why not green or a muted purple, or brown? (I guess it's common sense not to expect a bright color like red to be a mainstay). Blue is actually my own favorite in any event, I wonder if that's because I've had so much exposure to it with all the ballpoints over the years--I always used blue in school.

[AndyH]

I know that in the USA all official document must be signed with blue ink, for avoiding photocopies.

 

Not exactly. North Carolina deeds still have printed on them a requirement that they be signed in black ink (for imaging purposes) although most counties now have imaging equipment that can handle blue ink. It's just in the last two years that I've permitted blue pens in my office (before that, they were immediately confiscated).

 

Ditto that.

 

Massachusetts currently requires notaries to notarize only in black. Although deeds and other recorded documents may now be signed in blue, plans to be recorded must be in black and signed with India Ink.

 

I think the requirements originally, and perhaps still, have to do with copying equipment. You can tell an original signature from a copy at least with most pens, but a blue signature that did not copy well might appear to be an unsigned version. I sign original documents only in blue myself.

 

On the greater question, I had always thought that black inks were more expensive but also more permanent, at least up until the turn of the century (20th that is...) and that blue inks were based on less expensive and more easily obtained ingredients, resulting in blue for correspondence and black for "important" notes and documents.

 

I have no idea where I picked up this impression, except possibly from my FP using parents.

 

Great topic!

Edited March 19, 2009 by AndyH

[Ink Stained Wretch]

It occurs to me that I should note here that blue ink was a boon for offices that needed to make copies.

 

Some businesses have just about always needed to keep copies of outgoing correspondence: bills, letters, proposals, etc. What did they do before xerography was invented? Well, for a long while all they did was copy everything by hand. Clerks were employed to copy not only what the office might produce but other documents that they might need. Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" is full of this sort of detail.

 

The old carbon based inks were water fast so copying by hand was the only option. With the advent of the blue aniline inks, however, a new technique was discovered. The blue ink was not waterproof. So what businesses did was invest in large books that became their archives. These were specially made books that were bound like ledgers but which had onion skin paper. After a document was written a clerk, who needed to be sort of skilled at this, took that original and brought it to the book. He went to the next blank page, which insured that the record of correspondence was chronological, and he slightly wet the onion skin paper. He then pressed the original against it. For this purpose there used to be machines called letter presses in offices. I used to see them discarded in basements in my youth.

 

The very slightly damp onion skin pressed hard up against the original would leech off some of the blue ink. And that would be a faithful copy of the correspondence. The idea was that you only did this to one side of an onion skin page because the actual imprint left was a mirror image of the original. So you would read the copy in the book by looking at the reverse side of the onion skin page. I'm sure that must have been lots of fun doing by candlelight.

 

Some businesses just used loose onion skin sheets and kept them in a file box. But from what I understand this could be a problem in a court case, for example, because you could have written and copied that loose sheet at any time. It was a lot more difficult to fake a 2,000 page book that showed copies on every page and that had the relevant piece of writing embedded in the correct chronological order.

 

There were also "indelible pencils" sold. These contained tiny flecks of blue ink mixed in with the graphite and clay. They were used for the same purpose, getting the original copied efficiently. They were hardly "indelible." I know becvause years ago I tested some and you can remove the writing with those entirely. It's been decades since those experiments and I forget if it just required a long soak in water to remove the "indelible pencil" writing or if it required some detergent to get it to go away.

 

I'll also note that with the advent of the typewriter blue because an excellent editing color. Literary manuscripts were routinely "blue penciled" by editors, I still have a bunch of such blue pencils although I've only ever edited myself. And so blue ink could also serve a similar purpose. It would stand out on the black and white typewritten page.

 

So I think this is part of why blue ink really became a staple of offices.

[Chris]

The widespread use of blue ink certainly pre-dates photocopies. I used blue at school and that was long before the banda duplicating machine let alone photocopiers.

 

I guess it was simply nice to see bright blue ink for social correspondence in place of boring black (and red, for the overdrawn accounts) that you had used all day at work. Someone made blue ink and the rest is history. Had they made green or purple instead, we might be asking a different form of the same question.

 

Now we have even more colours to pick from - yipee.

 

Chris

[Johnny Appleseed]

When did people start using blue rather than black ink?

I agree that it was with the invention of aniline dyes in the mid 1850s. And then it got mixed with the gallotone inks for true blue/black ink. The really old ink was mostly carbon mixed with something to stick in on whatever you were writing on, not always paper.

 

Iron-gall ink is old stuff. IIRC I have seen iron-gall recipes from the 16th century at least. Carbon black ink was one popular form of ink in those days as well, but ink was also made from walnuts, sepia (squid ink), as well as many different pigments for colored ink. Midevial manuscripts often include a range of different ink colors - while mostly using a black or brown base ink for the bulk of the writing, many different types of colored inks were used for initial caps, decorations, emphasis, and sometimes even for whole passages of text (which is one of the origins of the "words of Christ in red" bibles).

 

The original "blue-black" iron-gall inks which became popular in the mid 19th century were generally made by mixing indigo with a ferro-gallic ink. The ferro-gallic ink dried to a black color bet went on pretty transparent, so indigo was added to make it more visible at first.

 

There are a couple of books on the history of ink that would probably address this all with more solid facts than we have here.

 

It occurs to me that I should note here that blue ink was a boon for offices that needed to make copies.

 

Some businesses have just about always needed to keep copies of outgoing correspondence: bills, letters, proposals, etc. What did they do before xerography was invented? Well, for a long while all they did was copy everything by hand. Clerks were employed to copy not only what the office might produce but other documents that they might need. Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" is full of this sort of detail.

 

The old carbon based inks were water fast so copying by hand was the only option. With the advent of the blue aniline inks, however, a new technique was discovered. The blue ink was not waterproof. So what businesses did was invest in large books that became their archives. These were specially made books that were bound like ledgers but which had onion skin paper. After a document was written a clerk, who needed to be sort of skilled at this, took that original and brought it to the book. He went to the next blank page, which insured that the record of correspondence was chronological, and he slightly wet the onion skin paper. He then pressed the original against it. For this purpose there used to be machines called letter presses in offices. I used to see them discarded in basements in my youth.

 

The very slightly damp onion skin pressed hard up against the original would leech off some of the blue ink. And that would be a faithful copy of the correspondence. The idea was that you only did this to one side of an onion skin page because the actual imprint left was a mirror image of the original. So you would read the copy in the book by looking at the reverse side of the onion skin page. I'm sure that must have been lots of fun doing by candlelight.

 

Some businesses just used loose onion skin sheets and kept them in a file box. But from what I understand this could be a problem in a court case, for example, because you could have written and copied that loose sheet at any time. It was a lot more difficult to fake a 2,000 page book that showed copies on every page and that had the relevant piece of writing embedded in the correct chronological order.

 

There were also "indelible pencils" sold. These contained tiny flecks of blue ink mixed in with the graphite and clay. They were used for the same purpose, getting the original copied efficiently. They were hardly "indelible." I know becvause years ago I tested some and you can remove the writing with those entirely. It's been decades since those experiments and I forget if it just required a long soak in water to remove the "indelible pencil" writing or if it required some detergent to get it to go away.

 

I'll also note that with the advent of the typewriter blue because an excellent editing color. Literary manuscripts were routinely "blue penciled" by editors, I still have a bunch of such blue pencils although I've only ever edited myself. And so blue ink could also serve a similar purpose. It would stand out on the black and white typewritten page.

 

So I think this is part of why blue ink really became a staple of offices.

 

The "indelible" pencils were often called "copying" pencils. There is a very old thread about them here by Carrie (one of our UK members who happens to work in museam curation), which you can find by searching "copying pencil".

 

John

 

[jar]

The mid to late 1800s seems to be the real turning point. IIRC one of the best examples is the output from Charles Dickens where there is a definite progress in his works from gall-black to blue as well as a progression in the paper stock he used from a cream colored stock to a blueish stock and finally to what we world recognize today as white.

[derkleineHerrFriedemann]

An interesting case to mention to this topic perhaps is the French school purple, which was also replaced by blue.

[afagjoi]

Very interesting topic. It makes me reminds this: I like the blue ink, unfortunately no much people likes in Mexico. This is tragic, really tragic, let me give you some examples.

1) Some teachers (really a lot), in my ages of student, didn't accept me homeworks or test in blue ink: JUST BLACK. But the WORST was the black inks must to been from ballpoints. No rollers, no fountains.

2) Some government forms on bottom can read (something like): "...no pencil, just blue or black ink. Other color or pencil filled invalid this form." DESPITE THIS... if I was filled the form with blue ink wasn't received by gobernament operators/officials and I have to filled with black ink again.

3) Actually, there's a kind of culture in some older people (specially) that don't accept your documents in blue ink.

4) Other people think the blue ink is for rioters or people who hide's a riot personality. Other's think this ink color is for gay people.

 

Anyway, I like the blue inks and is better and relatively more secure sign a document with blue ink than black ink (thinking in a photocopier).

 

The needs for an alternative for black ink and proliferation of carbon copies documents or forms, can made blue ink a good option to distinguish the original from the copy. I think, don't you.

[Deirdre]

Wikipedia says 12th c for iron gall ink.