Thomas Edison. The pen worked by rapidly punching holes in a sheet of paper to form an outline of letters in a stencil fashion, permitting ink to be injected onto pages below, which allowed multiple copies of a document to be made quickly. Edison, ever misguided, was confident that the invention would be “bigger than telegraphy.” Of course it wasn’t, but someone else was taken with the idea of the rapidly punching pen and redeveloped it to inject ink under skin. The modern tattoo gun was born.
