Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/506

P E N P E N proposed being silver, zinc, German silver, aluminium, and aluminium bronze, the last-named having at one time come into extensive use. The development of the gold pen can not be traced through the patent records in the same way as some others. Dr Wollaston, it is recorded, used a gold pen composed of two thin slips of gold tipped with rhodium, made apparently on the principle patented by Donkin in 1808. Messrs Mordan of London have the credit of being the earliest regular makers of gold pens with tips of osmium- indium alloy, and that manufacture was subsequently de veloped by Messrs Wiley of Birmingham. The gold pens now made are provided with indium tips, and their manu facture is a special industry, requiring processes and machines different from those used in the steel-pen industry. Fountain pens and penholders in which considerable reservoirs of ink could be carried ready for use were intro duced by a patented invention of the ingenious Joseph Bramah. Of his several plans for a fountain pen one proposal was a hollow tube of silver or other metal, the tube being made so thin that it could readily be compressed out of shape and so cause an escape of ink to the nib, and another plan was to fit the tube with a piston which might slide down the interior and so force out ink. John Scheffer in 1819 patented a device consisting of a reservoir in the holder operated on by a stud, which, when pressed by the thumb, yielded a flow of ink to the nib. Many forms of attachment and modifications of the shape of the pen have also been introduced with the view of enabling the pen itself to carry a considerable supply of ink, and to discharge it in writing in a safe and equal manner. A highly original and comparatively successful form of fountain pen of recent introduction is known as the stylograph, in which the ordinary form of nib is dis pensed with, and connected with the barrel or reservoir is a finely-tapered point tipped with indium pierced with a fine aperture. Into the aperture is fitted an iridium needle or plug attached internally to a delicate gold spring, and the act of writing sufficiently pushes back the needle to allow the escape of the requisite flow of ink by the aperture. The two principal forms of stylograph are that of Mac- kinnon, patented first in the United States in March 1879, and that of Cross, the United States patent for which was secured in January 1878. The finish which the common steel pen now shows, and the low price at which it can be sold, are triumphs of manufacturing skill, the credit of which is largely due to Birmingham. For the fraction of a farthing there can now be purchased an article incomparably superior to that which in the early years of the century cost five shillings. The metal used consists of rolled sheets of cast steel of the finest quality, made from Swedish charcoal iron. These sheets are cut into strips of suitable width, annealed in a muffle furnace, and pickled in a bath of dilute sulphuric acid to remove the oxidized scale from the surface. The strips so cleaned are next rolled between steel rollers till they are reduced to ribbons the thickness of the pens to be made. At this stage the raw material is ready for the series of manufacturing operations, most of which are performed with the aid of hand fly-presses, moving suitable cutting, stamping, and embossing attachments. The pen blanks are first cut out of the ribbon so as to leave as little scrap as possible. These blanks are next pierced, that is, the central perforation and the side or shoulder slits by which flexibility is secured are made at one operation.. After again annealing, they are marked and em bossed with maker s name, trade-mark, or any of the endless variety of marks by which pens are distinguished from each other. Up to this point the blanks are flat ; they are now raised or rounded into the semi-cylindrical form in which pens are used. At this stage the pens are tempered by heating in iron boxes in a muffle, plunging in oil, and heating over a fire in a rotating cylindrical vessel till their surfaces attain the dull blue colour characteristic of spring steel elasticity. They are then scoured and polished by being revolved in large tin cylinders, in which they are mixed with sand, pounded crucibles, or such substances. The grinding of the points next follows, an operation performed by small rapidly- revolving emery-wheels, on which the points are first ground lengthwise and then across the nib, the object of the process being to increase the elasticity of the point. The slitting process which follows that is, the cutting of the pen-slit from the perforation to the point is effected with a chisel-cutter worked by a hand screw- press. On the precision with which the slit divides the point depends the perfection of the pen, to finish which it now only re mains to colour the surface in a revolving cylinder over a charcoal fire, and to varnish it in a solution of shellac. Birmingham, which was the first home of the steel-pen industry, continues to be its principal centre, but steel pens are also made in the United States and in France and Germany. (J. FA.) PENANCE. The word "penance" (poenitentia) has a double signification, its strict legal meaning of a penalty inflicted by the formal sentence of a spiritual authority in punishment of an offence, and with the primary object of amending and so benefiting the offender ; and its wider and more popular sense of any ascetic practice adopted, whether voluntarily or under compulsion, for the expiation of sin or for advance in spiritual attainment. Broadly speaking, no trace of such a theory is visible in classical paganism, from which the idea of sin as a moral defile ment is almost absent. There are faint marks discernible in the Greek heroic legends of something analogous to penance, when we read of a hero being driven into exile for some crime (most usually unpremeditated homicide), and not permitted to return till he had found some one able and willing to purify him with certain lustra! sacrifices. In the historical period these lustral sacrifices continue, but the accompanying penalty disappears. Punishments for religious offences, and of a very severe kind, extending to death itself, as in the case of Socrates, are frequent, but they are not of the nature of penance, not having the amendment of the offender in view, but only the safety of the state, to be secured by an act of vengeance designed to avert the anger of the gods and to prevent the repetition of the crime believed likely to invoke it. The Oriental religions, contrariwise, teem with the ascetic principle, and personal austerities form a large part of the Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Brahman systems. Yet, with the exception of the pilgrimages, which enter so deeply and widely into the religious habits of the peoples professing these creeds, and involve much toil and suffering in the case of the poorer pilgrims, these austerities are not of general inci dence, but are confined to a comparatively small, and, so to say, professional body of devotees, such as the Indian Jogis, who are entirely distinct from the main body of their co-religionists. Islam had originally nothing even remotely like the practices in question, save in so far as the annual fast of liamadan and the hajj to Mecca and other sacred places necessitated self-denial ; and it is even on record that Mohammed himself directly discouraged an ascetic spirit which displayed itself in some of his trustiest companions and disciples, such as Omar, All, Abvt-Dharr, and Abu-Hrreirah. But the reaction of conquered Persia, long the home of Zoroastrian asceticism, on the Arab victors was marked and early, and an inner body of austere devotees arose in the midst of Mohammedanism within a century and a half of the Flight, though having no justifi cation in the Koran or in the body of early tradition for their tenets antl usages. They were in almost every instance of Persian origin, and the most famous of them all, the converted robber Fodheil Abu All ZalikhAnf, the Benedict of Islam, who first organized the scattered ascetics into the brotherhood of dervishes, was himself a Khorasanf of pure descent. But, like the Indian Jogis, the Moham medan dervishes and fakirs have continued as an isolated class, and have never exerted the kind of influence which Christian monachism, especially in the West, has done. Nor has the principle of penance ever formed an import ant integer of the Jewish religion. The Levitical code enjoins the performance of various lustral sacrifices in expiation of certain sins ; but the cost of the victims is the only element of penalty, being virtually a money fine