 One modern example of someone using a stub nib for rapid, and most certainly, extensive writing was the author Shelby Foote, the historian of the American Civil War.In an interview with the Paris Review he reveals that he wrote the entire transcript of his 3000+ page history of the Civil War with an Esterbrook #313 Probate Pen, a rather broad stub dip pen.According to Mathur et al., "the modern fountain pen nib may be traced back to the original gold nib which had a tiny fragment of ruby attached to form the wear-point."