It was the forties, science fiction’s Golden Age. Between pages, men and women and aliens patrolled the galaxies, commanded legions of robots and saved the Earth. The Lensman Series. I, Robot. The Humanoids. The Martian Chronicles.
Not surprisingly, this was when the Moore Fingertip was born.
It was the Battle of the Nibs. The Parker 51 had a nib you could barely see, Sheaffer’s Triumph nib was a tube (gasp!) and Moore responded with the Fingertip nib, a design so advanced the nib was inlaid in a stainless steel section. The Fingertip I found on eBay is a Demi, according to Penhero. It has a metal cap with a derby, and is possibly a later model.
This pen makes me want to jump on a rocketship and colonize a couple of planets.
The nib has an upturned profile. This one writes a fine line.
Moore was a technological pioneer in the early days of fountain pens, introducing Moore’s Non-Leakable safety pens to the world in 1899. Half a century later, the Fingertip’s revolutionary design failed to make a dent. Moore stopped production in 1950, and before long, stopped entirely.
I cleaned and resacced the pen, and filled it with Waterman Blue-Black. I’ve used it to write ten holiday letters (brief notes, not full-length year-enders) and I like it. The nib has a touch of bounce, and lays down a consistent line of ink.
Karlo figured out why I liked this pen so much. Unposted, its feel in the hand is similar to a Nakaya Piccolo. Pen technology is like science fiction: the science is fascinating, but it is the human story that makes it memorable.
