Ink Cartridges Through The Ages

When was the first ink cartridge rolled into service

? During the 1990s? 1980s? The 1970s even, if we include those long blue tube-like things that always used to leak in our school pencil cases?

In actual fact the first patent on a replaceable ink cartridge for a fountain pen was issued in France on 25th May 1827, to the Romanian Petrache Poenaru. However the fountain pen that came into popular use over the ensuing century and a half, adding style and elegance to simple functionality, was predominantly of the refillable kind, and cartridge pens didnt achieve relative popularity until the 1960s.

Today they are still used predominantly in independent schools, but tend generally to be regarded as collectors pieces as the biro and its various derivatives have developed from their earlier messy and rather unreliable state to the standard writing instrument of popular choice.

It was in the early 1980s that printer ink cartridges first came onto the market as a replacement for the noisy ribbon-based machines. Usually the ribbon would offer a choice of just two colours, black and red that is when a choice of any kind was available.

Modern ink cartridges, by contrast, provide almost unlimited options by running both black and coloured printer ink side by side, the later automatically blending the three primary colours in order to create more or less any hue or shade known to Man.

Although inkjets have been on the market for decades, economies of scale rendered them inaccessible to all but the wealthy few until critical mass was eventually achieved and the price of the printers plummeted to their present low. However the price of ink has remained more or less constant in spite of massively increased demand.

Unsurprisingly then leading brand manufacturers of printer ink compete today with suppliers offering compatible ink cartridges at a much lower price, as well as recycled and refillable cartridges. As with any product there rages an argument between cost and quality but users will generally experiment and settle down with whichever option suits them best.

Even high-volume printing presses nowadays tend to use boxed ink as opposed to the messy and wasteful free ink that would traditionally find its way onto every surface in the building as well as that that was being printed onto. Because it is clean and accurate it also tends to be far more economical than the hit and miss methods of yesteryear.

by: Mark Richards

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