My favourite pens – The Fisher Space Pen.

Back in the early days of my working life, I bought a matte black classic Fisher Bullet Space pen. Although they are a bit over-hyped, and now make so many models from the very cheap to the over-priced, the fact that they can write on wet or greasy paper, upside down and in extreme temperatures makes them very reliable, so that you always have a pen that works. And the compact bullet shape – about half the length of a normal pen – makes them very convenient for popping into a pocket or bag. But are the same length as full size pens when the cap is placed on the rear.
Apparently the original classic design is still on display in MOMA in NY.
Urban myth has it that NASA spent huge amounts on developing these pens for the space missions – whilst the more pragmatic Russians simply used pencils! – but this is untrue. They were developed independently, but have now become standard issue for both Russian and US space missions.

I used that pen for years, before either I lost it, or someone stole it. I strongly suspect the latter. And for some reason, I never replaced it.
In the last year or so, I have had a longing to get one again, for all the same practical reasons that made me buy one in the first place. And because my current studying requires me to do much more actual writing, rather than typing, lol, than I have done for years! But AFAIK they are not available in Malaysia. I believe that they are in Singapore, but it was never such a priority for me to actually go searching for one.

Then I became obsessed with getting one! My sister-in-law in the UK was going to bring one over, after I was going to order it from Amazon – she didn’t manage it.
She promised to send it via friend who was flying here later on, but changed her mind at the last minute as she reckoned her friend would misplace it or forget it somewhere. I don’t blame for that at all!

I finally cracked…….

 

And despite the shipping costs from America, I searched and found an on-line store that sold them at discounted prices, choose the two that I wanted, added a few refills (although the originals seem to last forever!) since the shipping cost was the same for up to 5 items, and due to a lack of patience and desire for near instant gratification, choose the most expensive and fastest shipping option which got them to me in 5 days, registered, hugely over-protectively packed in a box that would fit a 12″ pizza (!) and now I write with nothing else.
The Classic Brass bullet sits on my desk, and is used daily. The matte black “tactical” new shape bullet lives in my daily walk-around bag (and in fact would make a useful self defence tool due to it’s very heavy brass construction and rigidity, for hitting nerve points, or simply doing the basics of inserting it somewhere painful…which I won’t go into further detail about. You either know how to use available tools for self defence or not – I am not going to elaborate).

They are invaluable, and have improved my hand writing enormously, due to the consistency with which they write. One small fact though, is that I can only write in all caps, not script, a hangover from the days when I used to write long reports and statements and required total legibility, and a habit that I have never been able to break in the last 25 years. Fortunately, I can write as fast this way as most people can in free-flow script, so it has never really been a disadvantage.