We use ink every day in our printers and pens, but do you know who invented it? The Chinese inventor Tien-Lcheu is considered to be the 
inventor of ink, but the Egyptians were also using ink from very early times. At first, ink was a mixture of soot from pine smoke and lamp oil mixed with glue. The ink invented by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu about 5000 years ago, became common by the year 1200 BC. Other cultures developed inks using the natural dyes and colors derived from berries, plants and minerals. In early writings, different colored inks had ritual meaning attached to each color. Did you know that the Greeks and Romans made ink from the ink sac of the cuttle fish? The first pens ever used were made of reeds. Later, pens made of quills were invented. It was a British lock-smith, Samuel Harrison, who first made pens with nibs made of metal. By the twentieth century, fountain pens flooded the market… and today pens have become so much a part of our lives that we take them for granted!
