On the 10th of January 1799 Petrache was born at Benesti, Valcea County, Romania. He was a Romanian inventor and an Enlighted teacher and also George Lazar’s student. Petrache Poenaru invented the world's first fountain pen.

He studied philology at Vienna, then polytechnic at Vienna and Paris. Few people know that he was the forerunner of tank writing tool figment, invented in the West lately in 1884 when American insurance agent Lewis Waterman revolutionized the pen. He introduced the ink tank that supplies the nib continuously. So the pen appeared.

In1827, long before the American (that had conditions for the practical spreading of the discovery without knowing about Romanian’s figment) Petrache Poenaru invented and patented independently “the endless movable pen”. In order to increase his income he crafted by himself that tank pen when nobody was thinking to this. It was called “endless pen” that supplied itself with ink. He got the same patent for his figment also at Paris being offered by the French Government.

In 1831, one year later after launching the first world railroad in England on the 27th of October, young Petrache Poenaru said: “I did this trip by a means of transport that is one of the century’s wonders… 20 interrelated carriages, loaded with 240 people are pulled suddenly by only one steam engine…”. He was the first Romanian who travelled by train. The former subway station, “Semanatoarea” was named like him.

In 1832 he came back to Romania and worked as a teacher having a great contribution to national education organization. In 1848 he took part in Tudor Vladimirescu’s revolution (whose secretary he was).

In 1875 Petrache Poenaru died. At the end of his life he was appointed member of Romanian Academy. Pens are nowadays less used, especially by students, since the ball pen was discovered in 1938 also by an Eastern European, Hungarian journalist Laslo Biro.