The SIR Journal would like to wish all our readers a Happy New Year! To start 2017 off right, we have a half historical half satirical piece that examines the role of writing instruments in diplomacy over the past century.

by Cornell Overfield

It is sometimes said that history is written by the victors, overlooking that it is truly written with a fountain pen.

After tortuous negotiation, the crowning moment of any treaty or law is the moment of signing. The handshakes and group pictures accompanying international summits often plaster the news, while the hardworking pens and ink which fix signatures to paper toil in ignominy. Fountain pens burst on to the scene in the 1910s, and while the world has slowly slipped away into the banality of ballpoints and Bics, the world of diplomacy has clung to the elegance and superiority of fountain pens. While Henry Luce envisioned the 20th century as American, I hope this whimsical jaunt through the past one hundred years will convince you that this century was not one of Americans, but was and continues to be one of fountain pens.