From Donkey Musk to HP 02 Ink: a History of Getting Ideas Written Down
http://www.webmarktools.net/articles/3813/1/From-Donkey-Musk-to-HP-02-Ink-a-History-of-Getting-Ideas-Written-Down/Page1.html
Art Gib
Art Gib is a freelance writer. Read more about local Internet marketing and seo blog tactics at http://www.orangesoda.com/resources/marketing-and-your-blog/. Interested in developing an inexpensive custom blog, featuring your own graphics, technical support, and training that will get you started; contact us at the URL above. We'll be happy to get you started. By Art Gib
Published on 09/28/2011
People have felt a need to record thoughts and events and make lists for thousands of years. The reasons remain the same while the methods change.
You think nothing of grabbing your handy ballpoint pen to jot down a list of things to grab at the store or leave your number for the cute waiter. Nothing will do but using the smoothest, most lush writing instrument for your personal journal. You'll even spend several minutes lovingly refilling your fountain pen.
What we take for granted - the yearly back-to-school sale of cheap ink pens - would have been considered sheer magic for much of the earth's history. Writing stuff down has been a time-honored tradition since cavewomen inscribed the hunting list on the cave wall in charcoal. Over the millennia, the manner of writing things down and recording thoughts, ideas, and grocery lists has changed significantly. Today's ink is nothing like yesterday's. Ah, how innovative is the human mind to think of donkey musk as a useful ingredient.
Back in the day, cavemen felt particularly strongly about keeping a record of hunts, since their lives depended on the meat they managed to kill. To that end, they scratched drawings into the sides of their caves. For color, they used ash, mineral pigments, and crushed plants. Rock walls were followed by soft clay tablets, where the author would use a stylus to dig out pictographs. After clay tiles, wax tablets were all the rage for a long time. The Greeks developed a classy little hinged book-style tablet that allowed the writings to be kept pristine even over long journeys.
Ink was first invented by the Chinese, who used soot from pine smoke, lamp oil, donkey gelatin, and musk. While it didn't smell all that appetizing, it was great for rubbing over hieroglyphs, but the first civilization who created paper was the Egyptians. With all that papyrus growing along the Nile, it was only natural to turn it into some sort of useful product, and the first rough papers were inked with mineral pigments and crushed berries and plants.
Today, inks are made with a combination of natural and synthetic materials. Writing inks, such as the kind in a ball-point pen, must be smooth, adhere to paper quickly, and dry almost instantly (as most lefties know, inks do not dry fast enough). The same is true of printer ink.
There is a vast difference between yesterday's primitive inks and a HP 02 ink cartridge that you pop into your printer. It's hard to imagine a world in which ink did not exist. Just be glad it no longer includes donkey musk.
What we take for granted - the yearly back-to-school sale of cheap ink pens - would have been considered sheer magic for much of the earth's history. Writing stuff down has been a time-honored tradition since cavewomen inscribed the hunting list on the cave wall in charcoal. Over the millennia, the manner of writing things down and recording thoughts, ideas, and grocery lists has changed significantly. Today's ink is nothing like yesterday's. Ah, how innovative is the human mind to think of donkey musk as a useful ingredient.
Back in the day, cavemen felt particularly strongly about keeping a record of hunts, since their lives depended on the meat they managed to kill. To that end, they scratched drawings into the sides of their caves. For color, they used ash, mineral pigments, and crushed plants. Rock walls were followed by soft clay tablets, where the author would use a stylus to dig out pictographs. After clay tiles, wax tablets were all the rage for a long time. The Greeks developed a classy little hinged book-style tablet that allowed the writings to be kept pristine even over long journeys.
Ink was first invented by the Chinese, who used soot from pine smoke, lamp oil, donkey gelatin, and musk. While it didn't smell all that appetizing, it was great for rubbing over hieroglyphs, but the first civilization who created paper was the Egyptians. With all that papyrus growing along the Nile, it was only natural to turn it into some sort of useful product, and the first rough papers were inked with mineral pigments and crushed berries and plants.
Today, inks are made with a combination of natural and synthetic materials. Writing inks, such as the kind in a ball-point pen, must be smooth, adhere to paper quickly, and dry almost instantly (as most lefties know, inks do not dry fast enough). The same is true of printer ink.
There is a vast difference between yesterday's primitive inks and a HP 02 ink cartridge that you pop into your printer. It's hard to imagine a world in which ink did not exist. Just be glad it no longer includes donkey musk.