Pelikan

Pelikan as a company started in the early 1800's and the Pelikan Graphos Pen was first introduced in about 1934. Graphos was registered as a Trademark in the 1940's.
The Graphos was invented by Theodor Kovacs and the patent sold to Pelikan in 1927.
It was designed for the Professional Draughtsman (electrical; architectural; cartographical, technical etc.) and allowed them to move on from using the Ruling Pen and Dip Pen Nibs for their work, both of which needed to be manually supplied with ink.

The ink most used being 'Indian ink', a permanent/archival ink, it needed a pen that would work with this type of pigmented ink, Pelikans own is Drawing Ink A. The Graphos gave a continuous supply of ink therefore saving time necessary for reloading the Ruling and Dip pens.

Graphos nibs: The A nib produces ink lines of a constant width just like a Ruling pen; the T nib could give broader lines than most Ruling pens; the O nib gave rounded ends to lines and could be used for printing and drawing; the R nib for line work and stencils; the Z and N for lettering wether left or right handed and the S for freehand lines.
It was therefore an innovation at the time and eventually changed the way many drawing offices worked and the tools/instruments draughtsmen used.

Pelikan had many subsidiary company's one of which seems to have been Markant, the Pelkan Graphos was expensive and the Markant pen was introduced with less nibs and refinements, making it the same quality as the Pelikan but more reasonably priced, it became even more reasonably priced with the plastic case.
Pelikan and Rotring had business connections and it would seem that Rotring took over production of the Graphos in about 1978, however like the Ruling and Dip pen nibs which were replaced by the Graphos, this was replaced in drawing offices by the 'technical pen'.

The Rotring Micronorm with its refillable reservoir was one of the first, the "m" on the nib indicating it followed the 'micronorm' system of sizes. This sizing system was replaced with the DIN which gave the next generation of Rotring pen. The Rotring Rapidograph and Isograph give the ISO sizing as standard. Now the skill and knowledge of using these instruments in a 'drawing office' landscape has for the most part been replaced by the CAD machine and the 'drawing instruments' have found a new lease of life within many sections of the 'Arts and Crafts' world.

Copyright 2013 Jacqui Blackman

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