The history of the development of the pen

Among all kinds of brushes, the brush can be considered a unique category in China.

Traditional brushes were not only essential for the ancients, but also unique in expressing the special flavor of Chinese calligraphy and painting.

Chinese calligraphy and painting are inseparable from the use of brushes.

The history of the brush as a writing tool is very long, as early as the Neolithic era there are traces of brush depictions on colored pottery.

Although the Western Zhou and above have not yet seen a brush in kind, but from the prehistoric pottery pattern, the Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions can be found on some of the signs of the brush.

The Eastern Zhou's bamboo and wood slips, thick silk has been widely used to write with a brush.

It can be seen that the brush was used before Yin and Shang.

The earliest brushes can be traced back to more than two thousand years ago.

Zeng Houyi's tomb in Suizhou City, Hubei Province, discovered a brush from the Spring and Autumn Period, which is the earliest pen found so far, and it is an invaluable and rare information of the ancient times.

During the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, the pen was called differently all over the world, and there were many names, such as "pen", "I", and "whisk", etc.

It was not until the Qinqin period that the pen was called "pen".

Until the implementation of the Qin "book with the same text, car with the same track", the pen will be the name of a variety of unified called "pen".

According to legend, the Qin general Mengtian had taken the sheep's hair in the village of Shanlian to make pens, and was worshipped as the ancestor of the pen in the region.

It is also said that Meng Ten's wife, Bu Xianglian, was also proficient in pen-making skills, and was offered as the Pen Lady.

By the Han Dynasty, the pen has been more sophisticated, the road goblet is the master of the pen at that time.

In addition to rabbit hair, the raw material of the Han Dynasty brush, there is wool, deer hair, civet hair, wolf hair, etc., hard hair and soft hair.

At the same time, the texture and decoration of the pen tube is also rich.

According to the official history books, China's famous Xuan Pen was invented in the Han Dynasty.

The Xuan Pen period is an important period in the development of China's brushes.

During the Jin Dynasty, the purple brush made of rabbit hair in Xuanzhou, Anhui Province, was famous for its sharp edge.

The Xuanzhou Chen's pen was highly respected by Wang Xizhi and others.

By the Tang Dynasty, Xuanzhou became the center of the national pen, Xuan Pen reputation is growing, at this time the Xuan Pen whether in the production skills, the choice of materials, or in the art of sculpture of the pen, have been perfected, Liu Gongquan, Ouyang Xiu, Mei Yaochen, Su Dongpo and others have had a very high Xuan Pen evaluation.

Xuan pen in the Tang Dynasty was enshrined as tribute and imperial pen, according to the "Old Tang Book? Geography" records: Tang Tianbao two years, Tang Xuanzong climbed the stairs to see the new pool, dozens of counties in the south specialties, arranged in the downstairs, which has Xuancheng County pen.

Chen's and Zhuge's pen across the Tang and Song dynasties, pen skills passed down from generation to generation, the creation of the heartless loose Zhuo pen has the performance of soft and moist, solid foundation, long time, not scattered, smooth writing characteristics, said "the first in the sea".

In addition to the Song Dynasty, in addition to the Xuanshu Zhuge clan, Shexian Lv Daoren, Yixian Lv Danyuan, Xin'an Wang Boli, etc. are famous.

After the Yuan Dynasty, the pen industry centered in Huzhou is increasingly prosperous.

China's brush has entered the second important period of development - Lake Pen period.

Especially the most famous sheep-hair brush, loved by the scholars, and appreciated by the court, this time the lake pen and Xuan Pen has been the same reputation, and even more than the Xuan Pen, became the representative of the national brush, reputation at home and abroad.

The Lake Pen, known as "the skill of Mao Ying", originated in Shanlian Town, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province.

In ancient times, Shanlian was under the Huzhou Prefecture, so the brushes produced here were called Hubi, and Shanlian was also known as the "Pen Capital".

At that time, the lake brush, together with ink, ink stone and Xuan paper, was called the "four treasures of literature", and there were famous brush makers such as Feng Yingke, Zhang Jinzhong, Wu Sheng, Yao Kai, Lu Zhen, Yang Ding, Shen Xiurong and Pan Yixin.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the Shanlian Lake Pen gradually spread out, and the people of Shanlian opened a number of famous pen stores in different places, such as Gu Yuexuan and He Lianqing in Beijing, Zhou Huchen, Yang Zhenhua and Li Dinghe in Shanghai, and Bei Songquan and Lu Yitang in Suzhou.

The Ming and Qing Dynasties was the heyday of the development of China's pen industry, for the royal family of the imperial pen and the official pen, the production of exquisite and gorgeous to say, even the civil use of brushes, but also pays close attention to the decorative and aesthetic.

At that time used as the material of the barrel of the bamboo, jade, lacquer, ivory, porcelain, enamel, etc., in the decoration of the barrel, but also to do all the finishing touches to achieve an unprecedented abundance.

As the brush is made of animal fibers, difficult to preserve, so the complete ancient pen is very few, in addition to a few excavations, can see the Ming and Qing dynasty brush, can be considered a rare treasure.

Fountain pen

Since the invention of fountain pens in the mid-1980s on the basis of the feather pen, fountain pens quickly replaced the traditional feather pen and became the main writing tool in the 20th century.

Into the mid to late 1990s, computers, printers, and the Internet spread rapidly, largely replacing the writing function of fountain pens, and ballpoint pens with even better performance were widely used, also crowding out the market share of fountain pens.

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, fountain pens are still irreplaceable, and they are the preferred writing instrument for many people, and have become a symbol of the holder's value to some extent.

The production process is more and more sophisticated brand-name fountain pens, has become a high-grade expensive gifts, become a pursuit of the upper class, the price is not expensive.

The fountain pen because of its unique charm to attract many collectors, so how to choose a good pen, has become a discipline.

Many people like to collect fountain pens.

Because fountain pens not only have enough old and new brands and styles for collectors to choose from, but also the price is right, the world has a huge market, easy to collect, and extremely convenient to sell.

Even for rare brands that are exclusively for collecting, there are few fakes and not a lot of people specializing in speculation, so it makes connoisseurs and investors feel more comfortable with their purchases.

Pencils

In 1564, a catastrophic hurricane struck the island of England, and many large trees were uprooted in the hard-hit Cumberland region.

After the storm, a black mineral was found under the roots of the trees.

Just a scratch on the object can leave a black mark, it is "graphite".

Local shepherds used it to mark their sheep for easy identification.

Later it was made into sticks and sold to merchants for marking packages.

In 1781, the German chemist Faber, after many experiments, mixed graphite powder with sulfur, antimony, rosin, made into a paste and then extruded into a bar, which is the prototype of the pencil.

This pencil has a certain degree of hardness, writing is much better than graphite sticks.

Inspired by this, people cut graphite blocks into small strips for writing and drawing.

This was the first pencil.

Soon after, King George II took the Barrowdale graphite mine into royal ownership, making it a royal monopoly.

But writing with graphite strips is easy to get dirty and easy to break.

The task of putting the pencil in a wooden rod jacket was accomplished by the American craftsman Monroe.

He first built a machine that could cut out wooden bars, and then carved thin slots in the top of the bars, put the pencil lead into the slots, and then the two branches of the bars were paired and glued together, and the pencil lead was tightly embedded in the center, which evolved into the pencils we use today.

New members

With the development of the times, the progress of science and technology, the manufacture of pencils has also been injected with a lot of scientific and technological content.

There are core protection retractable pencils, coreless pencils, paper pencils and so on.

The most important feature of the core retractable pencil is that its lead core tube can be retracted under certain pressure.

This pen uses a metal collet, equipped with a protective spring to prevent heavy pressure, press the core can be semi-automatic core, not only the core is accurate, but also to avoid puncturing the pocket, to protect the lead core; no residual core activity pencil and the general lead core can only be used up to 12.4 millimeters so far as the activity of the pencil is different, no residual core activity pencil, even if the lead core to the last 1 millimeter can still be used.

This is the major innovation of the active pencil for more than a hundred years.

It is mainly the pen changed to a double collet structure, the front collet to hold the front end of the lead core, the rear collet is responsible for holding and advancing the lead core; paper pencils, also known as environmental pencils.

The main use of waste paper as raw materials (instead of traditional pencil production of wood), after a simple cut, after fine processing and become.

Compared with traditional wooden pencils, paper pencils use paper instead of wood, with more excellent quality, a wide range of product colors, and easy to roll and sharpen, good performance, and absolutely avoided the common wooden pencils within the pole broken core, cutting core folding, core bias, and other difficult to overcome the shortcomings.

Symbols

Today, we see that the H, B, HB marked on the pencils represent the degree of softness and hardness of the pencils, which also has a history.

Until the end of the 18th century, there were only two countries in the world that supplied pencils, Britain and Germany, and after Napoleon launched a war against the neighboring countries, Britain and Germany cut off the supply of pencils to France, so Napoleon ordered the French chemist, Condé, to find graphite mines in his own country and then make pencils.

But the graphite ore in France was of poor quality and the reserves were small, so Condé mixed clay into the graphite, put it into the kiln and grilled it, and made a pencil lead that was good and durable in the world at that time.

Different proportions of clay mixed in graphite produced pencil lead with different hardness and different shades of color.

"H" is the first letter of the English word "Hard", which stands for clay, and is used to indicate the hardness of the pencil lead.

The larger the number in front of "H" (e.g., 6H), the harder the pencil lead, i.e., the larger the proportion of clay mixed with graphite in the lead, the less obvious the writing, which is often used for rewriting.

"B" is the beginning of the English "Black" (black) letter, representing graphite, used to indicate the softness of the pencil lead and the degree of obviousness of the writing.

The "6B" is the softest and the blackest, and is often used for drawing.

Ordinary pencils are generally labeled as "HB", and the pencils used to apply the answer card during the exam are generally labeled as "2B".

Special Functions

Many people may not realize that pencils can also identify the authenticity of diamonds.

After the diamond is moistened with water, use a pencil to scratch on it, and the surface of a real diamond will not leave pencil marks.

Fake diamonds made of crystal, glass, tourmaline, etc. will leave traces