Stylus - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A stylus is a writing utensil, or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example in pottery

Pottery

Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...

. The word is also used for a computer accessory (PDAs

Personal digital assistant

A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

). It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen

Ballpoint pen

A ballpoint pen is a writing instrument with an internal ink reservoir and a sphere for a point. The internal chamber is filled with a viscous ink that is dispensed at its tip during use by the rolling action of a small sphere...

. Many styli are heavily curved to be held more easily. Another widely-used writing tool is the stylus used by blind users in conjunction with the slate

Slate and stylus

The slate and stylus are tools used by blind persons to write text that they can read without assistance. Invented by Charles Barbier and Louis Braille as the tool for "writing" Braille, the slate and stylus allow for a quick, easy, convenient and constant method of making embossed printing for...

for punching out the dots in Braille

Braille

The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two...

.

Styli were first used by the ancient Mesopotamians in order to write in cuneiform

Cuneiform script

Cuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...

, Egyptians (Middle Kingdom), and the Minoans of Crete (Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphic) made styli in various materials: reeds

Phragmites

Phragmites, the Common reed, is a large perennial grass found in wetlands throughout temperate and tropical regions of the world. Phragmites australis is sometimes regarded as the sole species of the genus Phragmites, though some botanists divide Phragmites australis into three or four species...

that grew on the sides of the Tigris

Tigris

The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...

and Euphrates

Euphrates

The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...

rivers and in marsh

Marsh

In geography, a marsh, or morass, is a type of wetland that is subject to frequent or continuous flood. Typically the water is shallow and features grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, other herbaceous plants, and moss....

es and down to Egypt where the Egyptians used styli from sliced reeds with sharp points; bone and metal styli were also used. Cuneiform was entirely based on the "wedge-shaped" mark that the end of a cut reed made when pushed into a clay tablet

Clay tablet

In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age....

, hence the name "cuneiform" from Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

cuneus = "wedge

Wedge

Wedge may refer to:Mathematics:* Triangular prism, a parallel triangle wedge* Wedge , a polyhedral solid defined by two triangles and three trapezoid faces* Wedge product, a mathematical term, named for the ∧ operator symbol used...

". The linear writings of Crete in the first half of the second millennium BC were made on sun dried clay tablets that were left to dry in order to become 'leather' hard before they were incised by the stylus. The linear nature of the writing was also dictated by the use of the stylus.

Etymology

The word stylus along with the word "style" came from the Latin word stilus meaning: "a stake; a pointed instrument, used by the Romans, for writing upon wax tablets," which derives from the Greek word στύλος meaning "pillar" and "stile for writing on waxed tablets." A different suggestion is that the word does not derive from the Greek word "στῦλος", but that it has a common root with the Greek verb "στίζω" (meaning "mark"). According to the 1875 London Dictionary of Greek & Roman Antiquities a Stilus is "an object tapering like an architectural column; a metal instrument resembling a pencil in size and shape, used for writing or recording impressions upon waxed tablets. It signifies:

"An iron instrument (Ov. Met. IX.521; Martial, XIV.21), resembling a pencil in size and shape, used for writing upon waxed tablets (Plaut. Bacch. IV.4.63; Plin. H.N. XXXIV.14). At one end it was sharpened to a point for scratching the characters upon the wax (Quintil. i.1 §27), while the other end being flat and circular served to render the surface of the tablets smooth again, and so to obliterate what had been written. Thus, vertere stilum means to erase, and hence to correct, as in the well-known precept saepe stilum vertas (Hor. Sat. 1.10.72; Cic. Verr. II.41)."

There exists minor controversy about the correct pluralization of "stylus". The form "styli" or even "stylii" has become acceptable, even among major American manufacturers of styli and online dictionaries, based on the assertion that it is a direct loanword from Latin

Latin

. However, "stylus" is in fact an English word based on the Latin word "stilus", and is more appropriately pluralized in English as "styli." Use of "stylii" is considered incorrect, as it would be based on the nonexistent Latin word "stylius".

Use in arts

Styli are still used in various arts and crafts. Example situations: rubbing off dry transfer

Dry transfer

Dry transfer is a term used to describe decals which can be applied without the use of water or other solvent. Sometimes they are called rub-ons or rubdowns due to the method of application. The decal itself is on a backing material such as paper or plastic sheeting much like a transparency. The...

letters, tracing designs onto a new surface with carbon paper

Carbon paper

Carbon paper is paper coated on one side with a layer of a loosely bound dry ink or pigmented coating, usually bound with wax. It is used for making one or more copies simultaneous with the creation of an original document...

, and hand embossing. Styli are also used to engrave

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

into materials like metal

Metal

A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...

or clay

Clay

Clay is a general term including many combinations of one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure.- Formation :Clay minerals...

.

Styli are used to make dots as found in folk art and Mexican pottery artifacts. Oaxaca

Oaxaca

Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...

dot art is created using styli.

Use in music recording and reproduction

In the sound recording industry, a stylus is a phonograph or gramophone

Phonograph

The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...

needle used to play back sound on gramophone record

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

s, as well as to record the sound indentations on the master record.

Several technologies were used to record the sounds, beginning with wax cylinders

Phonograph cylinder

Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...

,almost half a century before the invention of the magnetic cartridge

Magnetic cartridge

A magnetic cartridge is a transducer used for the playback of gramophone records on a turntable or phonograph. It converts mechanical vibrational energy from a stylus riding in a spiral record groove into an electrical signal that is subsequently amplified and then converted back to sound by a...

. The harder the material used, the harder the stylus has to be. For shellac

Shellac

Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes , which are dissolved in ethyl alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish...

records, a disposable stylus softer than the record was generally preferred for preservation of the recording. The styli for playing vinyl records are made out of Sapphire

Sapphire

Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide , when it is a color other than red or dark pink; in which case the gem would instead be called a ruby, considered to be a different gemstone. Trace amounts of other elements such as iron, titanium, or chromium can give...

or diamond

Diamond

In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...

Smartphones and computing

Modern day devices such as touchscreen phones can often be used with a stylus to accurately navigate through menus, send messages etc. As before, the stylus is pointed at one end and is made to fit in the grip of a hand comfortably. These styli can be found in all different styles. For example many new phones like the Nokia 5800 and LG (C) Cookie have a built in stylus which tucks in behind the back cover. Some styli may extend and contract into small pen like cylinders, which are easy to put away.

Today, the term stylus often refers to an input tool usually used with PDA

Personal digital assistant

s, graphics tablet

Graphics tablet

A graphics tablet is a computer input device that enables a user to hand-draw images and graphics, similar to the way a person draws images with a pencil and paper. These tablets may also be used to capture data or handwritten signatures...

s, Tablet PC

Tablet computer

A tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen...

s, and UMPC

Ultra-Mobile PC

An ultra-mobile PC is a small form factor version of a pen computer, a class of laptop whose specifications were launched by Microsoft and Intel in spring 2006. Sony had already made a first attempt in this direction in 2004 with its Vaio U series, which was however only sold in Asia...

s. In this method, the user operates a touch screen with a stylus, rather than using a finger, which avoids getting the natural oil from one's hands on the screen. It also improves the precision of the touch input, allowing use of smaller user interface elements. Styli may be used for handwriting or drawing on the touch-sensitive surface (e.g. the Nintendo DS

Nintendo DS

The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...

).

Styli are also found in use with commercial devices, particularly for electronically retrieving signature

Signature

A signature is a handwritten depiction of someone's name, nickname, or even a simple "X" that a person writes on documents as a proof of identity and intent. The writer of a signature is a signatory. Similar to a handwritten signature, a signature work describes the work as readily identifying...

Scientific instruments

Stylus may also refer to the instrument used to scribe a recording into smoked foil or glass. In various scientific instruments this method may be used instead of a pen for recording as it has the advantage of being able to operate over a wide temperature range, does not clog or dry prematurely, and has very small friction in comparison to other methods. These characteristics were useful in certain types of early seismographs and in recording barograph

Barograph

A barograph is a recording aneroid barometer. It produces a paper or foil chart called a barogram that records the barometric pressure over time....

s that were once used to verify sailplane records. The styli used in scanning tunneling microscope

Scanning tunneling microscope

A scanning tunneling microscope is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer , the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and...

s have only a single atom

Atom

The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...

at the tip; these are effectively the sharpest styli possible.

Etymology

Use in arts

Use in music recording and reproduction

Smartphones and computing

Scientific instruments

See also