The inkPod: Writing Made Fishy
by Marty Barrett
LAS VEGAS, Nev.-- Soon Epson and Hewlett Packard may need to stave off lawsuits from the original inkjets: squid.
Australian firm Bioink, Inc. has created a series of precision writing instruments packing reservoirs full of squid ink. What's more, the well never runs dry.
"The marine cephalopod continually regenerates its ink supply," said Bioink CEO David Amphour. Amphour studied marine biology from Brisbane to Woods Hole before he became what he calls an OOO, or Oceanographic Operating Officer, "thus creating a pen whose ink will probably outlast its casing."
Inside each ink reservoir thrive the enzymes that perpetuate the production of ink. And every time the nib of the simple fountain pen is depressed, enough oxygen enters the reservoir to regulate production.
"Just as a cephalopod's ink production is held in check by oxygen flow," Amphour says.
Three years ago a team of Bioink's major investors caught several squid off the Great Barrier Reef. The squid were crated and transported to the company's headquarters north of Byron Bay. Several liters of ink were taken from the confused but very much alive squid, Amphour says, and then the squid were released.
"We took them to within a kilometer of where they were captured," Amphour says.
From the ink samples cultures were grown, and soon began replicating themselves.
Towering vats of jet-black ink line Bioink's warehouse. The pen casings are made a mile away at the Brisbane Tool Works.
The casing is a lightweight titanium Amphour first encountered in modern diving bells and applied in such terrestrial form factors as laptops and briefcases. Titanium is too expensive and aesthetically lacking, Amphour says, for most pens, but in the case of Bioink's SquidNibs line the titanium is integral.
"As a bio-product, the ink really smells."
Indeed, even as we wrote the first lines of Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" on a sheet of copier paper, the "worst of times" was eerily evoked by the smell of the ink.
"Just because no one can hear you scream in space doesn't mean the squid's enemies can't be repulsed by the smell of its ink in the water," says Niles Clarke, Bioink's cofounder and developer of SquidNibs. "Our next step is to either make the ink smell more pleasant or develop a consumer demand for smelly ink."
Until then, the titanium casing keeps the smell under control until it's time for a poison pen letter. And Clarke believes the longevity of the pen more than makes up for its living, malodorous ink.
"The disposable writing instrument industry nets $4 billion a year," says Clarke, "and all from sales of things you throw in the trash after a few months. Our products last lifetimes. They can be handed down many generations. Compare one SquidNib at $5 with the cartons of pens most working people buy in a lifetime."
"Huge value," Amphour says. "So what if it stinks?"
LAS VEGAS, Nev.-- Soon Epson and Hewlett Packard may need to stave off lawsuits from the original inkjets: squid.Australian firm Bioink, Inc. has created a series of precision writing instruments packing reservoirs full of squid ink. What's more, the well never runs dry.
"The marine cephalopod continually regenerates its ink supply," said Bioink CEO David Amphour. Amphour studied marine biology from Brisbane to Woods Hole before he became what he calls an OOO, or Oceanographic Operating Officer, "thus creating a pen whose ink will probably outlast its casing."
Inside each ink reservoir thrive the enzymes that perpetuate the production of ink. And every time the nib of the simple fountain pen is depressed, enough oxygen enters the reservoir to regulate production.
"Just as a cephalopod's ink production is held in check by oxygen flow," Amphour says.
Three years ago a team of Bioink's major investors caught several squid off the Great Barrier Reef. The squid were crated and transported to the company's headquarters north of Byron Bay. Several liters of ink were taken from the confused but very much alive squid, Amphour says, and then the squid were released.
"We took them to within a kilometer of where they were captured," Amphour says.
From the ink samples cultures were grown, and soon began replicating themselves.
Towering vats of jet-black ink line Bioink's warehouse. The pen casings are made a mile away at the Brisbane Tool Works.
The casing is a lightweight titanium Amphour first encountered in modern diving bells and applied in such terrestrial form factors as laptops and briefcases. Titanium is too expensive and aesthetically lacking, Amphour says, for most pens, but in the case of Bioink's SquidNibs line the titanium is integral.
"As a bio-product, the ink really smells."
Indeed, even as we wrote the first lines of Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" on a sheet of copier paper, the "worst of times" was eerily evoked by the smell of the ink.
"Just because no one can hear you scream in space doesn't mean the squid's enemies can't be repulsed by the smell of its ink in the water," says Niles Clarke, Bioink's cofounder and developer of SquidNibs. "Our next step is to either make the ink smell more pleasant or develop a consumer demand for smelly ink."
Until then, the titanium casing keeps the smell under control until it's time for a poison pen letter. And Clarke believes the longevity of the pen more than makes up for its living, malodorous ink.
"The disposable writing instrument industry nets $4 billion a year," says Clarke, "and all from sales of things you throw in the trash after a few months. Our products last lifetimes. They can be handed down many generations. Compare one SquidNib at $5 with the cartons of pens most working people buy in a lifetime."
"Huge value," Amphour says. "So what if it stinks?"
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