Hello from Switzerland

[Dennis]

The fountain pen began to fall out of favour, with the invention of the Biro in the mid 1940s. A really ugly ball pen, which cost £2: quite a lot of money at the time.
Also fountain pens needed re-filling from a bottle, which could be quite messy, and the bladders perished and needed replacing from time to time.
With air travel becoming more universal it became apparent that they could leak on planes, and I spent a week at a foreign conference with a large ink stain on the front of my jacket.
Now they are prized collectors pieces. Dennis.