5 replies to this topic

[welch]

I have wondered for several years why there seem to be more medium and borad nibbed P51 from Newhaven than from Janesville. Also why the medium nib from England seems broader than the US medium.

 

(Tom Mullane once estimated that about 80% of the US-made 51s head had seen had a fine point.)

 

The obvious answer -- a non-answer -- is that the UK market preferred broader nibs; the US market preferred fine nibs. Sure, Parker built what their local markets wanted.

 

Why did the US market want a fine nib, while the UK market wanted more medium and more broad nibs?

 

My best guess, as a former apprentice social historian, is that

 

- evidence might be found in comparing US and UK handwriting texts from the '20s - '50s. I don't have samples; this is one place I would start

 

- evidence might be in Parker company archives. Someone in marketing must have discussed this. While a marketeer might not know exactly why the UK preferred wider nibs, they might have had an explanation

 

- evidence might also be in etiquette books. Perhaps US books taught people that writing smaller characters signalled that the writing was a finer person...had more education, was more careful, came from a professional / managerial status or class

 

- I notice that there are plenty of Esterbrook 2668 and 9668 nibs, so part of the US market used a medium nib. Given the price (and advertising), I would guess that the '51 was intended as a gift pen for wealthier people than those who used Esterbrooks. Maybe a graduation pen for someone going on to college, or a college graduation pen, or a doctor/lawyer/business manager's pen 

 

- After 1955 or 1960, Parker seemed to offer more medium nibs, especially in the Parker 45 line...a  model intended for schools.

 

Those are guesses. Does anyone have evidence?

[Paul-H]

Hi

 

Don't know the answer but I have been through quite a few 51's and most of them have been English, but being that I am in England that should not be a surprise and the vast majority of them have been mediums and the ones that where not where broad or oblique broad, I have never seen a fine English nib, of all the American ones I have owned 99% have been fine nibbed.

 

So just going on my collection it looks like most American 51's where fine nibbed and most English 51's where medium nibbed.

 

As to why we in England go for a medium over anything else that's probably more down to the fact that the sort of shops that most pens are or where bought from only stocked medium nibbed pens, the more specialised dealers that stocked a broader range of pens have always been more specialised or more expensive and only catered for a limited customer base.  Remember the UK has only had quite high average wages since the 1980's before that the vast majority simply could not afford the luxury of high priced writing instruments, with most settling for pens from the likes of Platignum, Osmiroid, Stephens and the low end Parkers, this is one of the reasons Newhaven dumbed down the Duofold to the NS & AF pens that where a class below the older and bigger versions that went before them.

 

Paul

[pajaro]

Europeans in general seem to prefer broader nibs.  They must use better paper than us Americans, to not have a lot of bleed through.

 

I find the fine nib better, because we Americans seem to use cheap-*ss crummy paper that bleeds through too easily.  Broad just blobs.

 

Note to America:  USE BETTER PAPER!

[David Nishimura]

I would not generalize so broadly about European tastes in nibs.

Spain seems to favor finer nibs, and you don't see that many broad nibs in Italian pens, either.

 

While I'm as curious as anyone about whys and wherefores, I'm afraid the reasons for national tastes are often utterly inexplicable.

[Greg Minuskin]

My wife has the answer, Janet, a master calligrapher and historian of the pointed pen, 

 

Society in the U.K. were taught early on to use a "broad edge" pen in the grammar schools, and as such, forms/documents issued/required to be filled out there, including invoices and signing log books had larger spacing between the lines for this larger writing.

 

In the U.K. they were doing Celtic and Gothic lettering which required a thicker line. 

 

We had Roger Platt Spencer here; finer, spider lines which the U.K. did not.

 

With the advent of "global" business and the tying together of the financial centers around the world with early computers and such starting in the 1960's between financial institutions, the need to standardize size/forms for doing business, and since America was the power house at the time after WWII, the rest of the financial world conformed to the smaller writing standards.

 

Of course this was back "then" and not the case now. 

 

There you go!
 

Greg Minuskin

greg@gregminuskin.com

www.gregminuskin.com 

Edited by Greg Minuskin, 27 December 2013 - 12:28 AM.

[welch]

My wife has the answer, Janet, a master calligrapher and historian of the pointed pen, 

 

Society in the U.K. were taught early on to use a "broad edge" pen in the grammar schools, and as such, forms/documents issued/required to be filled out there, including invoices and signing log books had larger spacing between the lines for this larger writing.

 

In the U.K. they were doing Celtic and Gothic lettering which required a thicker line. 

 

We had Roger Platt Spencer here; finer, spider lines which the U.K. did not.

 

With the advent of "global" business and the tying together of the financial centers around the world with early computers and such starting in the 1960's between financial institutions, the need to standardize size/forms for doing business, and since America was the power house at the time after WWII, the rest of the financial world conformed to the smaller writing standards.

 

Of course this was back "then" and not the case now. 

 

There you go!
 

Greg Minuskin

greg@gregminuskin.com

www.gregminuskin.com 

 

This begins to make sense. I have suspected that the UK textbooks taught or encouraged a fatter line than did US textbooks. I started 7th grade in 1960, which seems like a breaking point for many things. Each year, more kids used ballpoints. I had lousy handwriting from the beginning, from third or fourth grade onward, and I think I had a fine-nibbed Sheaffer school pen. Awful. Got a Parker 45 with a medium nib in 7th grade, and loved it.  

 

I think we used wide-ruled three-hole paper in elementary school. I switched to "college ruled" paper in 7th grade and stuck with it. Other kids -- those with fine handwriting, which also meant smaller letters -- shifted to narrow-ruled paper. 

 

For the record, ordinary school paper was FP-friendly in the '60s. I think I used National paper: gray lines, red left margin. I still have my letter telling me to start kindergarten in September, 1953: ditto-printed. Remember the ditto machine? Some of the worst quality of paper. However, a school administrator signed the letter using a fountain pen and bright blue ink...which has not faded or dulled over 60 years. 

 

Memory tells me that by the late '70s, much of the paper was only fit for ballpoints. Fiber-tipped pens would feather and bleed. The General Electric Company had its own paper...in fact, the Company had an integrated supply organization that provided paper, ballpoints, fiber-tipped pens, staplers (Swingline with the GE "meatball"). By the late '80s, the standard paper had become unfit for fiber-tipped and fountain pens (we used a standard paper from the finance department, with four or five vertical lines, because it was easier to line up the indentations in our computer source code).