U.S. President Lyndon Johnson raised public demand for felt-tip pens

Pentel's first felt pen, left, came in a beige casing, a popular color at the time. But when the company received a large order one month after its release, the customer asked Pentel to make the outside of the pen black, the same color as the ink. As a result, the pen became black, center. The beige color only survived for one month. On the right is the current black pen. (Credit: The Yomiuri Shimbun)

Pentel Co.'s felt-tip Sign Pen, which did not sell at all at first, eventually became a big hit thanks to former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts.

The company released its felt-tip pen in January 1963. The pen is said to have been the first in the world to adopt a cotton reservoir containing water-based ink. Unlike conventional oil-based ink, it does not smudge on paper nor bleed through the paper.

Pentel advertised the product with confidence, but it did not sell as expected.

An advertising leaflet from the late 1960s used images of newspapers with headlines such as "U.S. president uses it regularly." (Credit: The Yomiuri Shimbun)

"We named the pen 'Sign Pen' because the name sounded good, but there was no demand for autographs in Japan," said a public relations staff member at the company.

Thinking there would be demand for them in the United States, the company exhibited the product at a trade fair in Chicago in August 1963. It then received an order from the president, according to the company.

Apparently, the president saw his press secretary using the pen and liked it. When the story was picked up by the media, sales immediately jumped, the company said. There are records showing that as of August 1964, 1.8 million pens had sold in the United States in a year.

The pen was also used in NASA's manned spacecraft Gemini around December 1965. In a weightless environment, ink does not drop into the tip of ballpoint pens and fountain pens. Sign Pen, however, was able to be used in space as it had cotton inside and the ink was sucked into the tip of the pen by capillary action.

The company currently ships 15 million pens a year worldwide. Its products are widely used by TV writers, as well as those in the advertising industry for handwritten proposals and by schoolteachers for grading students' tests.

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