“THE FIRST STEEL PEN.—(5th S., iii., 395.) Ten years before Dr. Priestley was born steel pens were in use. There are references to them in the Diary of John Byrom, who required them when writing shorthand. In a letter to his sister Phoebe, dated August, 1723, he mentions them as follows: 'Alas! alas! I cannot meet with a steel pen, no manner of where I believe I have asked at 375 places, but that which I have is at your service, as the owner himself always is.”' (Remains, Vol. i., 39.)
Mr. Ralph N. James, writing to Notes and Queries, gives the following extract from the very amusing “journey to Paris,” by Dr. Martin Lister, 1698:
“There was one thing very curious, and that was a Writing lnstrument of thick and strong silver wire, bound up like a hollow button or screw, with both ends pointing one way, and at a distance, so that a man might easily put his forefinger betwixt the two points, and the point divided in two, just like our steel pens.”—London Notes and Queries, vol. iii., page 346.
This note caused another writer, Mr. C.A. Ward, to send the following:
“STEEL PENS.—The extract given from Dr. M. Lister's, by Mr. Ralph N. James, is very interesting. The doctor there speaks of 'our steel pens,' as if they were not at all uncommon. When the poet Churchill's effects were sold up, after his death, Nov. 10, 1764, they fetched extravagant prices; 'a common steel pen' brought L.5.”—London Notes and Queries, vol iii., page 474.
The following extract from London Notes and Queries gives very plausible reasons against placing confidence in the preceding and other notices of ancient steel pens:
“STEEL PENS. (5th S., vol. iii., pp. 346, 474.) May I ask whether, in giving the interesting references to the use of steel pens before the time of Priestley (one reference even going so far back as the seventeenth century) your correspondents have carefully considered what is meant by the terms. For my own part (of course I maybe quite wrong) I should naturally have anticipated steel pens in these references to mean not the modern steel nib for ordinary penmanship, but the ancient steel pen for drawing lines or ruling circles, such as is contained in every box of mathematical instruments. This would explain (to some extent) the great price fetched for a good one of Churchill's; a mere old steel nib would scarcely enter into a sale at all. It would explain, too, why a special process of hardening should be applied to a quill, in order to make it do duty for the steel instrument. One would scarcely think of hardening a quill in order to enable it to compete with a steel nib in some of the least desirable qualities, though one often wishes one could accomplish the reverse process, and soften or supple a steel 'stick frog,' so as to give it the elasticity of the grey goose quill. “—V. H. I. L. L. C. IV. (iv., 37, 5th S., London Notes and Queries.)
Mr. R. Prosser, author of “Birmingham Inventors and Inventions,” in writing to the compiler of this work, says:
“It has often occurred to me that some of the very early references to metallic pens may perhaps mean the draughtsman's 'ruling pen,' and not an instrument made after the fashion of a quill pen with a slit in it. That it is possible to write with such an instrument this paragraph will show, but I must admit that it is not equal to one of Perry's J's.”
From an entry in “Pepys' Diary,” October 24, 1660, drawing pens appear to have been in use in London, at the time of the Restoration: