Writing Instruments: A Technical History & How They Work

This was the last book I read in 2007, making it number 22. I fell
short of my goal for the year by a full thirty books! Clearly in 2008 I
need to spend more time reading.

You'd probably have to be a pen nut to finish reading this book, originally a paper titled An Engineer's View of Writing Instruments,
but as I qualify for the title of pen nut, I enjoyed reading this quite
a bit. It answered some of my questions about the mechanical workings
of fountain pens, confirming some and dispelling other notions I had
about how ink gets from inside a fountain pen to the paper. Roe covers
much more than fountain pens here, though. He provides a overview of
the entire history of writing instruments and the development of
different types of pens and pencils as well.

The real treat here was the section where Roe (who holds a doctorate
in fluid dynamics from Cambridge) explains the relationships between
the surfaces of a pen's nib and feed and an ink's viscosity and surface
tension. I'm still pretty far away from a practical understanding of
the dynamics at play, but his overview was clear enough to demonstrate
the principles to a layman like me, even if the specifics were beyond
me.

Writing Instruments: A Technical History & How They Work

Goeff Roe

6/10

http://www.booksaboutpens.com/covers/Writing_Instruments_Roeb.jpg

Self-Published Paperback, 1996. 41 pages