Writing implement

A writing implement or writing instrument is an object used to produce writing. See also Draw. 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 .

Another writing implement employed by a smaller population, is the stylus used by blind users in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille.

These have an inherent functionality in that their useful life corresponds to the length of their physical existence, i.e. they cannot "run out" and persist as useless objects.

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.

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