is a privately held Japanese manufacturing company of stationery products. The company name was derived from the trademark used for one of their first widely known products, a portmanteau of the English words painting and pastel, but has since been interpreted as a combination of the words pen and tell (as in telling a story). Pentel is also the inventor of non-permanent marker technology. Most Pentel products are manufactured in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and France.

The company is regarded as the inventor of the fibre-tipped (felt-tip) pen in 1963.

In 1963 Pentel launched the "Sign Pen", a fibre-type pen that was used by then President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson, who bought a dozen of them to sign photographs, apart from being adopted as the official writing instrument of NASA and going into space with a Gemini mission in 1966. Demand for a Sign Pen was so extraordinary that the Tokyo factories could not supply all requests.

In the 2010s, Pentel launched the "Pocket Brush", a fudepen that used replaceable waterproof ink cartridges, like fountain pens (and unlike conventional brush pens, which are more like marker pens.)

Brush pens (designed and recommended for calligraphy) have also gained popularity among comic book artists, who choose them to ink their works instead of dip pens or traditional brushes. One of those artists using Pentel was Neal Adams.

Products

Stationery

Product lines include Sharp Kerry, Sharp P200 series, Multi 8 (All-purpose mechanical pencil), Twist-Erase, Q-Erase, Quicker Clicker, Graph 1000, Graphgear (500, 800 and 1000), Smash, Orenz, OrenzNero (mechanical pencils or "sharps"); Ain and Hi-Polymer (mechanical pencil leads, erasers); Energel (gel ink pens); Floatune, Vicuña (hybrid ink ballpoint pen); RSVP (oil-based ballpoint pens), Pentel Pen (permanent marker), and Sign Pen (fine tip marker).

Range of products manufactured by Pentel includes:

thumb|200px|Pentel RSVP pens

{| class="wikitable" width="700px"

|-

! width= 150px| Type

!width = 650px| Products

|-

| Writing implements || Rollerball pens, gel pens, ballpoint pens, mechanical pencils, fountain pens, marker pens, highlighters, brush pens,pencils,colour pencils, refills

|-

| Art materials || Oil pastels, crayons, watercolors

|-

| Office supplies || Erasers, correction fluids, correction tapes, glues

|}

Other products

Pentel produces and sells electronic devices and production equipment in addition to stationery.

  • Electronic equipment – Touch panel, digitizer (liquid crystal pen tablet), touch switch, electronic pen (airpen)
  • Production equipment – for industrial robots, industrial automatic assembly machines, precision dies for injection molding, precision hand presses
  • OEM supply (OEM Division) – Cosmetic parts, stationery, office supplies, medical equipment

References

  • Pentel Global
  • Pentel of America

<!--======================== ============================

| PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS IN ADDING MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. Wikipedia |

| is not a collection of links nor should it be used for advertising. |

| |

| Excessive or inappropriate links WILL BE DELETED. |

| See Wikipedia:External links & Wikipedia:Spam for details. |

| |

| If there are already plentiful links, please propose additions or |

| replacements on this article's discussion page, or submit your link |

| to the relevant category at the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) |

| and link back to that category using the template. |

|======================== ==========================|

-->