P. Costantino Iorio and the patent for a fountain pen modification
Astronomy, didactics, spirituality, ancient literature, there are many fields of knowledge in which Jesuits have distinguished themselves over the centuries and made their contribution as scholars and disseminators of their discoveries. There has also been no lack of Jesuit inventors, as in the case of Fr. Costantino Iorio SJ.
Fr. P. Iorio was born on 11 December 1881 in Volturino, in the province of Foggia. He entered the Society very young in December 1896, took his last vows in 1916; he belonged to the Neapolitan province and died on 5 February 1951 in Lecce. Fr. Costantino lived in L’Aquila, at the Collegio d’Aruzzo, and it was here that he matured his invention, perhaps thanks to his daily activity as a writer and teacher together with his pupils.
The patent
P. Costantino submitted an application for recognition of his own patent to the Intellectual Property Office of the Ministry of Corporations in early 1935.
The application was for the recognition of an industrial patent for the ‘refinement of the fountain pen by means of an internally-fluted spray gun to regulate the flow of ink’.
The application was accompanied, as required by law, by a description of the invention and drawings. The photo shows some of them depicting the internal structure of the pen.
P. Iorio was granted a patent at the end of 1935, with the number 333309. The patent contains both the drawings submitted as official documentation – the originals of which were handwritten by his father – and the description of the invention.
It would be interesting to be able to verify whether this particular fountain pen design is still in use today and whether it ‘revolutionised’ everyday writing in the 1930s and 1940s.
Fountain pen experts, collectors and those interested in the subject, if you would like to clarify these doubts, please write to the historical archive, although you will hardly ever use a fountain pen again!
Maria Macchi
