Iridium Kiss
First Published in the Pennant 2002

"Mr. Dutcher would you share the answer with the rest of the class.

I jumped.  Ms. Vanderwater never called a student by their surname unless she was terribly angry. She had caught me day-dreaming about Julie Anderson, the lovely girl who sat beside me, and I hadn't heard a word of the chemistry lecture since it began.

"I'm sorry, would you repeat the question,"I said.

"Name one of the elements from the platinum family that Smithson Tennant discovered in 1804", she asked. A clear challenge resonated in her voice.

I was lost. I didn't even know that platinum had a family. Every eye in the class turned to me as Vanderwater prepared her coup de grace   But then an angel came to my rescue. Julie whispered the answer to me so that only I could hear.

"One element in the platinum family discovered by Tennant would be Iridium," I said.

Every eye turned from me to Vanderwater who nodded defeat and slowly walked back to her desk. After the class I thanked Julie and we attended the Christmas dance together, which resulted in my first real kiss. I owe a lot to iridium.

That was a long long time ago, but to this day, every time I hear the word "iridium", I drift back to Ms. Vanderwater's chemistry class. After growing interested in fountain pens, I was a bit startled to learn that my friend iridium had such an important role with pens, and I was curious about how iridium found its way onto a fountain pen. I imagine Vanderwater would be proud.

              Julie was right of course. Smithson Tennant, the British chemist  famous for proving diamonds were in fact carbon, discovered iridium and osmium at the same time.  He published his findings in 1804 and received the Copley Medal in recognition. However, much of the credit should go to William Hyde Wollaston, another British chemist and Tennant's colleague. Together they bought a huge load of platinum ore and began experimenting on ways to refine it. Wollaston discovered platinum and rhodium in 1801 and Tennant, using the same samples isolated iridium and osmium. Tennant seemed only interested in academics, and published his findings quickly but Wollaston was interested in making a profit from their experiments, and this would become important later for the gold pen.

              But to learn how iridium ended up on a pen point we need to look at Thomas Jefferson. Our third president had a problem.  He kept a large flock of geese at Monticello to supply him with quills, but Jefferson always needed more.  He wrote constantly and the quills quickly wore out.  He needed a pen with a point hard enough to withstand the stress of writing, but still retain flexibility for proper penmanship.

              Jefferson discussed this with John Isaac Hawkins, a young inventor. Hawkins was a charismatic genius, and though he is not well known today, he contributed a great deal to science. It was he who coined the term "Bi-focals" for Benjamin Franklin's invention.  In 1801 Hawkins had invented an upright portable piano, which quickly became a huge success. Jefferson bought one of these and was able to travel back and forth from America to France with a piano on board a ship.  Hawkins had also solved another of Jefferson's problems. Jefferson wrote so many letters, he had trouble remembering what he wrote to whom.  What he needed was a way to easily copy his letters so he could keep them on file.  Hawkins quickly invented the Polygraph in 1803.  Not to be confused with the lie-detector, Hawkin's polygraph was a system of rods and levers connecting two pens.  The user would write with one pen, and the device manipulated the other pen, duplicating the pen strokes.  Jefferson said, "It is the finest invention of the present age."However, Jefferson now needed twice as many quills. 

Hawkins traveled to London in 1803 to learn about steel pens that were becoming popular from a manufacturer named Wise. While learning metallurgy, Hawkins studied other writing instruments, and was particularly interested in the pencil. At that time, the pencil was little more than graphite suspended in a wax stick, wrapped in a cord. Seeing the need, he invented the first mechanical pencil in 1822.  One of the reasons that Hawkins is so little known today is that he was an inventor and had little interest in business.  He always sold his patent rights quickly to men who would fortune from them. Hawkins had sold the rights to his piano to George E. Blake, his Polygraph to Charles Wilson Peale and his pencil to Samson Mordan.

Hawkins continued to experiment with pens and hard stones. In 1823, Hawkins fashioned pens out of tortoise shell.  While the shell was wet, he would embed tiny diamonds into the points and as the shell dried it would contract, holding the diamond points in place. The results were frustrating, and his diamond tips would fall out easily when the pen was used.

Doughty, another pen maker in London, was having a little better luck in 1825. He was working on a method to solder rubies to gold nibs.  Diamonds were harder, but would burn too easily, but rubies fared a little better.

In 1830 Wollatson, still hoping to make a profit with his metals, sent samples of rhodium, and a natural mixture of iridium and osmium to Doughty, asking if he might be able to make a pen with these materials.  They were harder than rubies, and should prove to be a superior tipping material if he could work them into shape.  Doughty succeeded with only rhodium.  He wrote that iridium and osmium were just too hard and brittle.

Hawkins heard of this experiment and wrote to Wollatson, asking for the samples.  He would like to try these new metals to tip his pens.  In 1834, after a great deal of experimenting, Hawkins succeeded in grinding the iridium into shape and soldering it to a gold nib. The iridium-tipped gold pen was born

However the process was far from practical. Hawkins wasted 7/8ths of the material in the shaping process. Also iridium was not easy to come by in a grain or pellet form. It could be extracted chemically from Platinum ore, but this was a fine powder and the melting point was so high, that no furnace on earth could melt it.  The Iridium-tipped-pen seemed destined for elite people who could afford such an extravagance. Hawkins, sold his patent rights to Charles Cleveland. In 1835, Cleveland formed a Partnership with Levi Brown of Detroit to manufacture these popularly called diamond point pens.  Still they faced the same problems, finding naturally occurring iridium in grain form, and then shaping the hard, brittle substance. 

In 1876 Duncan Mackinnion, hired John Holland of the Holland Gold Pen Company to supply his Stylographic pens with iridium tips. Instead of a nib, these pens use a hollow tube to dispense ink. Holland quickly ran into problems with this contract.  At first Holland tried soldering a grain of iridium to the pen�fs ink tube and then drill a tiny hole through it. His drill bits broke at an alarming rate, and he was running out of places to buy naturally occurring grain-sized iridium. Out of necessity he developed a technique to solder several smaller grains around the tip of the ink tube. Still he was running out of places to buy iridium. What he needed was a way to fuse the commonly available iridium powder, and then mold the iridium into the proper shape, but no one had found a way to reach such a high melting point. After a year of experimenting he found that eureka moment.  Holland placed the iridium powder in a hessian crucible, and after heating it as high as he could, he mixed in phosphorus. The phosphorus burned hot enough to melt the iridium. For the first time iridium seemed like the perfect material for tipping pens and practical to work. Holland applied for a patent on November 4^th 1880 for this process. Almost immediately the English firm, Johnson Matley & Co. who claimed that they had invented this process long ago, attacked Holland.  The Scientific American magazine came to Holland's defense by publishing a heated condemnation for the firm. Stating, "If the Firm had known this process they do no not deserve credit since they hid it for the years they claim. But this claim seems highly unlikely. If they had known how to fuse iridium, then they would undoubtedly have had the metal available to sell when Mr. Holland contacted them three years ago, seeking to place an order."

By the 1890's most quality pens were being tipped with iridium. Soon however, pen makers experimented with cheaper and easier to work alloys, and today few pens actually have iridium in what they refer to as the iridium tip.

Copyright 2002

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Selected Bibliography:

D. McDonald and L.B. Hunt, A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals (Matthey 1982)

Silvio A. Bedini, Thomas Jefferson and His Copying Machines (Charlottesville, 1984)

J. Holland, Fountain Pen. Patent April 23, 1878

J. Holland, Fountain Pen. Patent Jan 21, 1879

J. Holland, Process of Fusing and Molding Iridium. Patent May 10, 1881

Scientific American April 24, 1880

Scribners Monthly, May 1880

Debois Review, June 1850

Manufacturer and Builder, May 1884

Manufacturer and Builder, August 1884

New York Tribune, June 7th,1850