Twenty-Six Old Characters, The (1947)

[Music] e this looks pretty serious little sister is really giving her all and she has good reason to be serious because she thinks she's riding well she is riding using one of the earliest forms of writing known to man to express something she has on her mind writing is an important art and if this little girl and millions of other small children expect to be be successful when they grow up they have to learn to write clearly and rapidly and this is the first step little sister is making a very hard job of it because this is hard work for her it' be hard work for all of us if we had to think consciously as little children do of every move our hand and arm make as we write writing would be almost impossible if we had to think think every time a muscle contracted or relaxed every time our hand changed direction for a curve or to push or pull to form a letter just try it yourself sometime in front of a mirror fortunately it doesn't take long for any of us with the help of our teachers to learn to write rapidly legibly and easily we have learned how to make marks on paper that tell what we're thinking about that tell others how we feel about them transferring our thoughts without a spoken word we can write notes on what we're doing that can be read many years from now and we can use the magic of writing to send our thoughts to friends in any part of the world yet each of us started out where little children start by drawing pictures and these childish drawings are only a little different from the picture writing of many thousands of years ago this ancient picture writing scratched with a bit of Flint on a piece of slate tells of a battle with a mammoth picture writing did well enough for recording a simple fact but it could never be used for a clear expression of a thought or an idea while some people were still recording events with pictures the ancient Egyptians developed a form of writing called hieroglyphic that was capable of expressing everything that could be told by the spoken word the Egyptians also wrote in pictures but now each picture stood for the sound of a syllable this was a big Improvement and it was made practical for everyday use by improved tools for writing the re brush and the polished Papyrus upon which they wrote but the Papyrus from which we get our word paper was very expensive and the read brush wore out quickly and had to be replaced this kind of writing was slow because each character had to be carefully drawn it was also hard to read and write because so many different pictures were needed to express every syllable in the language with the passage of time the Egyptians went to a nearby land to mine copper and semi-precious gems and from the surrounding desert they hired the seites to help with this mining the seites found it was necessary to keep accounts of the work they did and the pay that was due them but Egyptian writing was much too complicated so probably with the help of a friendly Egyptian scribe the seites developed the world's first pure or alphabet their first letter was a crudely drawn head of an ox in their language an ox was called an L which we spell a l pH and so this picture stood for the sound of a their second letter was drawn in the form of a courtyard for a house which they called bet spelled b e t so this letter was given the sound of our letter b from the serite names of these two letters Al and bet came our word alphabet there isn't much resemblance here to our A and B but in just a minute you'll see what happened to change them business needs caused the beginning of the first alphabet and business activity caused the alphabet to spread the Phoenicians descendants of the seites were the traveling salesman of their day in their great ships they sailed over the Mediterranean trading with the people who lived on its Shores carrying their version of the site alphabet to their Greek customers and the Greeks made changes in the letters that the Phoenicians brought to them they took the Phoenician Al and stood it on its feet they took the Phoenician bet and changed its appearance too all through the alphabet they went beautifying each character but cutting straight lines wherever they could this was because most of their writing materials the wax tablet and the stylus the hard Stone and the Chisel made the cutting of Curves very difficult rapid smooth comfortable riding was still many centuries Away In Time the Greeks became the great world Traders and with them to Rome went their alphabet the Romans in their turn changed the alphabet until it became very much like the 26 old characters we used today for thousands of years the world had been writing only in capital letters but with the invention of the Reed pen the Romans began another change the Reed pen made it easy to move across the Papyrus without stopping at the end of each letter so for the first time letters were joined together and writing was much faster but in connecting the letters their appearance was changed and that was the beginning of our small [Music] [Music] letters the next big change came in the middle a ages and again the tools used in writing had an influence on the change manuscripts then were being written on calf skin which was called Vellum from the same route that gave us the word ve and the writing was done with quills usually made from the wing feathers of geese with these expensive and Superior writing materials handwriting became a fine art but it was very slow and these head heavy fancy letters were also extremely hard to read and though the quill pen was the best writing tool available it wore out quickly and was easily broken with the passage of more centuries the Affairs of the world demanded a more convenient writing tool and more speed and legibility paper was now comparatively cheap and gradually the quill was abandoned in favor of the new steel pen even before the American Revolution steel pens were being made by hand in France and this better writing tool began to have an effect on the kind of writing people use gradually there came into use a new method of handwriting an elaborate Style with many flourishes and Scrolls this was faster and easier to read in the manuscript writing of the Middle Ages but each letter still had to be carefully drawn when people tried to make these fancy letters in a hurry this is what happened writing tools were still far from perfect for one thing the ink used at that time quickly corroded the pen points this led to the manufacturer of gold pin points with very elegant holders the gold points didn't corrode but they were so expensive that most people kept on using steel pens and in spite of all the years that had passed since the invention of writing there was still the unsolved problem of convenience and there's no time to lose Mr Jenkins this issue is being snapped up by some of the biggest investors in the country well [Music] h H Mr Bradford I never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd be investing in a railroad you're doing the wise thing the world is changing rapidly everyone's demanding more and more speed in everything the Smart Ones the ones who get in on the ground floor are going to make the big profits yes I think I agree with you oh if you have something for me to sign I'll do it now excellent Mr Jenkins you'll never regret [Music] this oh no no we'll have to postpone our business the ink is dried up not at all Mr Jenkins not at all here's a pen well and here's the here was the ink yes it's pretty easy to see why many attempts were made to develop a pen that would carry its own supply of ink in one of these early efforts the pen got its shot of writing fluid from a medicine dropper this worked well enough at times but often when the pen went dry the medicine dropper was someplace else no medicine dropper no ink no ink well I suppose it was pretty hard to keep your temper when things like that happened then a long came the idea of letting the pen carry its own medicine dropper a slit was made in the barrel so that when a coin was pushed in the rubber sack was pressed and when it was released the rubber sack filled with ink this worked all right too until well maybe you guessed it even after thousands of years of writing progress that's more or less the way things were then one day an Iowa Jeweler took the step that made the fountain pen a practical tool what he did was to put a lever on the barrel to do the job of the coin that was too often missing this was the forward step that brings us up to the present in this story of the 26 old characters and the tools that have influenced their development today the fountain pen like every other improved writing tool in history is causing changes in the way we write making it easier faster and better adding to the permanence of writing let's take a closer look at this tool that has resulted from so many centuries of progress at first glance there doesn't seem to be much to it this is a chamber to hold the ink with a lever to fill it this feed system carries the ink from the supply chamber to the pen point this is the gold pen point that does the actual writing some pens use a plunger instead of the lever for filling through small but continual improvements in design the modern fountain pen is the cleanest and most convenient tool ever developed for permanent handwriting for example how is a pen designed so that the ink will not leak out into your pocket or onto your fingers the answer is in the large size of the feed chamber when the air inside the pen is expanded by the heat of the hand or body the ink has plenty of room to go instead of flowing out on your hand or into your pocket the modern pen can go a long time between drinks and to get the very best out of it there's an expert way of filling a pen just open and close the lever but then let the point stay in the riding Flor fluid a full 10 seconds with the plunger type filler it's a little different you might think that when the plunger is pulled out the pen would fill but you see it doesn't happen that way well then what's the trick just watch this the gold point is immersed completely in the riding fluid and the plunger is pushed and pulled several times this flushes out everything and at the same time creates a strong vacuum then push the plunger and wait for 10 seconds so the pen can drink its fill how is a fountain pen designed so the ink flows smoothly without interruption at exactly the rate you need it actually without knowing it you yourself control the Flow by hand measuring the exact amount depending on how fast you write this fluid control works by what is known as capillary action capillary action sounds a little complicated but all liquid type fountain pens depend on it an old-fashioned lamp makes it easy to understand a kerosene lamp Burns because oil climbs up the wick from the bowl the oil is carried up the wick by a capillary action in the small fibers of the cloth this principle has been applied to all modern fountain pens but in the place of a wick the fountain pen has grooves in the most highly developed fluid control the riding fluid travels down the inside of the feed Rises to the Pierce and slit of the point and then down the point then as the ink on the point is used up capillary action regulated by your own individual speed of writing brings fresh fluid to take its place so no matter how fast you write your fountain pen can keep up with you in fact the fastest handwriting in the world today is done with fountain pens I believe he is the kind of employee we need here but since I want to be absolutely sure I ask him to come back again next week thanks a lot for sending him in regards and so forth that's all for now Miss Simpson just as everyone in the world is different from everyone else no two people in the world write exactly alike no one else in the world writes the way you do it's something that marks you as different even before your very special letter to that very special person is opened that special special person knows it's from you each person's handwriting is so individual that even strangers can tell who the writer is handwriting experts can identify people as easily as fingerprint experts do can identify people by their signatures alone a bank clerk will cash a check because he recognizes the signature although he may never have seen the depositor and perhaps your teacher has never met your father but she knows his signature individual differences in handwriting make possible many of the activities upon which the world depends and because writing is so important people form opinions of You by the way you write even now your handwriting is having its effect on you for example scribble old written work makes it difficult for teachers to concentrate on what you've written but if you write clearly the writing doesn't have to be deciphered and all of the teachers attention can be given to your expression of what you've learned today as throughout history writing is influenced by the kind of writing tool it's used for one thing a good pen is important because it should be a life lifetime investment and if you find it hard to write clearly and comfortably it may be because the pen you have doesn't fit your writing style so if you'll show your handwriting to a store that carries fine fountain pens you can find out what point is best for you a pinpoint can be found to suit your particular style of writing the feel of a pen is a result of the hand grinding and tampering of the longwearing Gold Point itself on the way it is shaped from tip to heel and just as there is a penp point for every writing style there are pen points for different kinds of writing jobs [Music] so you have seen and heard a very brief story of two great inventions our simple easy to ous alphabet and the tool that has played such a big part in the use of these 26 old characters but even today in some parts of the the world handwriting is still complicated here's a message for you in Chinese this is the way an Arab writes the same [Music] thing while a Welshman writes it this way in [Music] gayy maybe you'd like to know what this message looks like in eng [Music] here it [Music] is