The Ballpoint Pen The ballpoint pen, known in Spanish as “bolígrafo, lapicero, pluma”, is an important and innovating writing tool that, nowadays, is the most used writing instrument. Millions of people use ballpoint pens every day, making easier to write in many kinds of surfaces, especially on paper. It substituted the fountain pens, which used to be the most common before ballpoint pens.
It was officially invented in 1938 by the Hungarian inventor and journalist László József Bíró (Ladislao José Biro) who got the Argentine nationality after the Second World War. Even though, before him there were similar patents that looked like the ballpoint pen. The first one was one made by John Loud in 1888, was a leather tanner and looked for an instrument that could write on leather.
As Wikipeda had written, László Bíró, a Hungarian newspaper editor, was frustrated by the amount of time that he wasted in filling up fountain pens and cleaning up smudged pages, and the sharp tip of his fountain pen often tore the paper. Bíró had noticed that inks used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge free. He decided to create a pen using the same type of ink. Since, when tried, this viscous ink would not flow into a regular fountain pen nib, Bíró, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to work on designing new types of pens. Bíró fitted this pen with a tiny ball in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. Bíró filed a British patent on 15 June 1938.
Most of the pens had problems with the viscosity of the ink, but Biro’s pens used an special technology that fixed this. First, he used a piston and capillary action, but with the time he changed them using a spring that kept pressure on the piston, and still later the Biro pens used just gravity and capillary action.
Lásló and George Biró had to fle from Hungary in 1940 to Argentina, which accepted because they had met before the Argentine president Agustín Pedro Justo. The president met them at Yugoslavia in a congress, and considered Biro’s invention amazing. Also, Meyne, a friend and partner, help them to flee to Argentina. He started a company called “Birome”, with only 40 workers. The first product was expensive, and it could compete with other brands of pens. But the student edition was the one that won lots of prizes. It was economic, so the people accepted it really well, selling thousands of it. In this regard, at his last interview before he died, he stayed that the pen was “ My Toy” which only left 37 millions of dollars in the Argentine treasury, money earned by selling products not of the land but of the brain.
Why is it an innovative gadget?
Because the usage of the ink & feather, and the fountain pen made writing difficult in relation with neatness and comfort, hence, Laslo Biró and his brother Geroge Biró, design a useful and helpful gadget in order to correct this two problems and have a longlasting duration with quick dry.
Brief video about the history of the ballpoint pen:
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