Is the Pen Mightier Than the Board?

I learned to write at six years old using a pencil the size of a chainsaw and paper with lines so wide that I could drive an F-250 pickup truck between them. As a newbie writer, the pencil was my preferred instrument of choice because mistakes were as common as General Motors’ revised business strategies.

As I matured under the tightly controlled tutelage of Franciscan nuns in Catholic elementary school in the early 60s, I graduated one day to the pen. As luck would have it, the 1960s witnessed leaps of innovation in the humble pen. In fact, the magisterial fountain pen was just being eclipsed by the upstart ballpoint pen.

Getting the Ballpoint

The ballpoint pen had been the brainstorm of Patrick J. Frawley Jr and Fran Seech, who had dreamed up a unique advertising campaign that they called Project Normandy. 

Frawley instructed his salesmen to barge into the offices of retail store buyers and write all over the executives’ shirts with one of the new pens. Then the salesman would offer to replace the shirt with an even more expensive one if the ink did not wash out entirely. The shirts did come clean and the promotion worked. Within a few years, the Papermate pen was selling in the hundreds of millions.

The other man to punctuate the success of the ballpoint pen was Marcel Bich, a French manufacturer of penholders and pen cases.  In 1952, Bich was ready to introduce a clear-barreled, smooth-writing, non-leaky, inexpensive ballpoint pen he called the “Ballpoint Bic.” 

The Write Stuff

Instantly, I was fascinated by pens. It was writing without a net. One slipup and you had to start all over. Erasers were for pencil pushers, not the mighty who wielded pens that clicked and then steamrolled over paper.

From those early days in elementary school to the present, I have always used a pen. In fact, I stayed abreast of pen technology breakthroughs as diligently as Microsoft tracked software piracy.

In the 60s, for example, the modern fiber tip pen was invented by Yukio Horie of the Tokyo Stationery Company. A decade later gel pens were invented by the Sakura Color Products Corporation.

In the 90s, the Avery Dennison Corporation trademarked the Hi-Liter® pen, commonly known as a highlighter.

Today, pentop computers, stylus pens for tablet PCs and inkless pens are the latest innovations.

Don’t Touch Don’t Tell

My love affair with pens was pragmatic and private, not romantic and revelatory. I didn’t buy expensive Cross or Mount Blanc pens. Instead, I used everyday middle class pens purchased from office superstores or pharmacies, but I savored and zealously protected those pens like they were one-of-a-kind writing instruments.

Like OCD detective Adrian Monk who doesn’t shake hands, I don’t share my pens. As a middle manager for the same company for 37 years, I often inhabited a cubicle where people would walk by and casually say, “Can I borrow a pen?”

For those inconsiderate and promiscuous users of pens, I was always prepared. With my private cache of pens locked up in my lap drawer, I always offered them my “public” pen – the only one designed for use by others.

In my home office, my pens sat in a New York Giants coffee mug safe and secure, because family members knew that touching my pens was like touching the Mona Lisa. It just wasn’t done without expecting severe punishment and a long prison term.

Even the typewriter couldn’t come between me and my pens because I wrote out my articles and short stories before committing them to the typewritten page. Often, I would rewrite an article four or five times with a trusty fine point gel pen and then ask my wife – an expert typist – to type it up for me.

But in the 90s, something came between me and my love affair with pens. It started slowly as an innocent fling, as I tested this new technology. But soon, random and chance encounters become more frequent and planned until one day, I bought my first desktop computer – with a keyboard.

Suddenly, I discovered that the computer keyboard –although physically resembling a typewriter keyboard – had one tremendous advantage. Changes can be made to the written word with a few tabs of important keys such as BACKSPACE, DELETE, INSERT and even TAB.

Hunt and Peck

After graduating to more powerful personal computers (see Moore’s Law), I began to investigate the mechanism of the keyboard.

Apparently, keys on older IBM keyboards were made with a “buckling spring” mechanism, in which a coil spring under the key buckles under pressure from the typist’s finger, pressing a rubber dome, whose inside is coated with conductive graphite, which connects two leads below, completing a circuit. This produces a clicking sound, and a “positive” feel of feedback, so that the typist knows when the key is fully pressed.

By contrast, keys on most modern keyboards are made with a so-called “dome switch” mechanism, without the buckling spring.  

Early computer keyboards were first adapted from the punch card and teletype technologies. In 1948 for instance, the Binac computer used an electromechanically controlled typewriter to both input data directly onto magnetic tape (for feeding the computer data) and to print results. The emerging electric typewriter meant a monogamous relationship was born between the typewriter and the computer.

Mutually Assured Construction

By the dawn of the 21^st century, I found myself in an open relationship with my pens and my computer keyboard. Both knew that exclusivity was no longer possible, since I was wedded to the convenience of the computer keyboard, but still loved the feel of writing with my pens.

After Y2K however, the pen seemed to be supplanted by all forms of new technology. Once I bought an IPAQ PDA in 2002 and began using a stylus to take notes and record my calendar, the emotional distance between me and the pen grew as large as Donald Rumsfield’s ego.

When I fully embraced online banking and other paperless initiatives, I found that pens collected dust in my coffee mug like obsolete tools. The cell phone and its address book storage capability only further alienated me from my pens.

Two years ago, I found myself texting with my cell phone, logging appointments with my PDA stylus, typing my articles with my computer keyboard and even using email to eliminate snail mail. Writing Christmas cards gave way to emailing ecards with a dancing Santa courtesy of a Flash plug-in.

My pens sat neglected and unwanted, like my collection of Terry Bradshaw beer bottle openers and my Michael Vick autographed rookie card, until one day – while taping the CTRL key with my left pinkie – I felt a yearning for old-fashioned writing.

So I put away my PDA and took out my daily planner, bought a daily journal and deleted the calendar, journal and task entries in Microsoft Outlook on my desktop computer.

Handwriting Psychoanalysis

Suddenly, I felt invigorated again with those carpal tunnel cramps that invariably come with too much writing.

I had found the secret to a balanced life – the pen and keyboard. Neither is mightier. Everything in moderation, as the Greeks would say before their civilization was destroyed by the excesses of conquest and demagoguery.

With a keyboard, the presentation is the same for all people – neatly typed words on a white page. The only possible topic of conversation was the selection of a font, which is a discussion best shelved for a more appropriate time – like when you are in a POW camp or trapped in an ER waiting room.

Now, my pen madly scribbled notes and letters and people again questioned my handwriting with those endearing comments.

“Is that a D or a G?” “Your As look like Os” “Were you writing this while on an aircraft flying into a hurricane?”

Today, I have discovered the feng shui between my pens and the keyboard. In fact, I wrote this essay first before typing it on my laptop. I would have been done earlier but I couldn’t read my own writing.

My As do look Os. Is that an R? Did I use Greek letters? Do I know Egyptian hieroglyphics?