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Concept
Writing implement
Summary
A writing implement or writing instrument is an object used to produce writing. Writing consists of different figures, lines, and or forms. Most of these items can be also used for other functions such as painting, drawing and technical drawing, but writing instruments generally have the ordinary requirement to create a smooth, controllable line.
Another writing implement employed by a smaller population is the stylus used in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille.
An autonomous writing implement is one that cannot "run out"—the only way to render it useless is to destroy it.
The oldest known examples were created by incising a flat surface with a rigid tool rather than applying pigment with a secondary object, e.g., Chinese jiaguwen carved into turtle shells. However, this may simply represent the relative durability of such artifacts rather than truly representing the evolution of techniques, as the meaningful application of pigment is attested in prehistoric cave paintings such as the ones at Lascaux.
The ancient Sumerians and their successor cultures, such as the Babylonians, produced their cuneiform writing by pressing a triangular stylus into soft clay tablets, creating characteristic wedge-shaped marks. The clay tablets were then baked to harden them and permanently preserve the marks.
Several other ancient cultures such as Mycenaean Greece also inscribed their records into clay tablets but did not routinely bake them; much of the Linear B corpus from Minoan Crete was accidentally preserved by a catastrophic fire which hard-baked those tablets. The Romans used lead styli with wax tablets which could be "erased" by rubbing the beeswax surface smooth again.
In the modern era, hand held computers and certain other computer input devices use a stylus to enter information onto a screen by applying pressure rather than by depositing pigment.
Words and names are still commonly inscribed into commemorative objects, such as the engraved winners' names on the silver Stanley Cup or the Gettysburg Address carved into the stone wall of the Lincoln Memorial, but the requisite tools are not exclusively considered to be writing instruments.
Official source
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