It’s a debate as old as time and has had the world’s finest intellectuals at war for years – what is better to write with, fountain pens or ballpoint pens? Okay, maybe it’s not that serious, but if ...

Would you pay $180 for a new type of writing instrument? Image via The New York Times On a crisp fall morning in late October 1945, approximately 5,000 shoppers rushed the 32 nd street Gimbel’s ...

You might expect that email and the ballpoint pen had killed the fountain pen. But sales are rising, so is the fountain pen a curious example of an old-fashioned object surviving the winds of change?

At its most basic, a pen has to do just one thing, but there are so many reasons to choose one over another. Does it glide along the page, or does it drag? Does the ink flow in a smooth line, or is it ...

Fountain pens were a stylish statement but messy and impractical. Their replacement was a stroke of design genius perfectly in time for the era of mass production. On 29 October 1945, the New York ...

June 10 is National Ballpoint Pen Day (as well as, for some reason, National Iced Tea Day). The inventor of the ballpoint pen was Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro, who was also a hypnotist, racecar ...

The Moon 1969 fountain pen, handcrafted by Italian maker Omas, pays homage to the historic moon landings that year. The end of the pen’s cap is that “big, blue marble in the sky,” Earth, depicted with ...

The evolution of writing implement technology is a continuous and subtle one. Lewis Waterman opened up the possibility of portable pens with his invention of a practical fountain pen in 1884. But ...

What do you get for your money? That’s the question everyone looking to buy a piece of tech asks themselves. It also happens to be the question this recurring feature will try to answer. Is it worth ...