A pen is a tool used for
writing or drawing with a colored fluid, such as ink.
A ballpoint pen is a pen that uses a small rotating ball
made of brass, steel or tungsten carbide to disperse ink
as you write. It is very different than its pen predecessors
-- the reed pen, quill pen, metal nib pen, and fountain
pen.
All of the pens that preceded the ballpoint used a watery,
dark India ink that fed through the pen using capillary
action. The problems with this technology are well-known.
For example:
The ink can flow unevenly.
The ink is slow to dry. The ink is exposed
to the air while it is flowing through the pen, so it
cannot dry quickly or it would clog the pen.
When it does accidentally dry in the pen,
the ink gums the whole thing up and requires meticulous
cleaning.
When you add to this list the fact that fountain pens
tend to flood when you fly on an airplane with them, you
can see that all pens up until World War II presented
some significant problems for their users -- the world
awaited a better solution.
Hungarian journalist Laszlo
Biro was well aware of the problems with normal pens.
Biro believed that the idea of a pen using a quick-drying
ink instead of India ink came to him while visiting
a newspaper. The newspaper's ink left the paper dry
and smudge-free almost immediately. Biro vowed to use
a similar ink in a new type of writing instrument. To
avoid clogging his pen up with thick ink, he proposed
a tiny metal ball that rotated at the end of a tube
of this quick drying ink. The ball would have two functions:
It would act as a cap to keep the ink
from drying.
It would let ink flow out of the pen
at a controlled rate.
In June 1943, Biro and his brother Georg, a chemist,
took out a new patent with the European Patent Office
and made the first commercial models, Biro pens. Later,
the British government bought the rights to the patented
pens so that the pens could be used by Royal Air Force
crews. In addition to being sturdier than conventional
fountain pens, ballpoint pens wrote at high altitudes
with reduced pressure (conventional fountain pens flooded
at high altitudes). Their successful performance for
the Royal Air Force brought the Biro pen into the limelight,
and during World War II the ballpoint pen was widely
used by the military because of its toughness and ability
to survive the battle environment.
In the United States, the first successful, commercially
produced ballpoint pen to replace the then-common fountain
pen was introduced by Milton Reynolds in 1945. It used
a tiny ball that rolled heavy, gelatin-consistency ink
onto the paper. The Reynolds Pen was a primitive writing
instrument marketed as "The first pen to write
underwater." Reynolds sold 10,000 of his pens when
they were first introduced. These first publicly sold
pens were very expensive ($10 each), primarily because
of the new technology.
In 1945, the first inexpensive ballpoint pens were manufactured
when Frenchman Marcel Bich developed the industrial
process for making the pens that lowered the unit cost
dramatically. In 1949, Bich introduced his pens in Europe.
He called the pens "BIC," a shortened, easy-to-remember
version of his name. Ten years later, BIC first sold
its pens on the American market.
Consumers were reluctant to buy the BIC pens at first,
as so many pens had been introduced in the U.S. market
by other manufacturers. To counter this hesitancy, the
BIC company created an exciting national television campaign
to tell consumers that this ballpoint pen "Writes
First Time, Every Time!," and sold it for only 29
cents. BIC also launched television ads that depicted
its pens being fired from a rifle, strapped to an ice
skate, and even mounted on a jackhammer. Within a year,
competition forced prices down to less than 10 cents each.
Today, the BIC company manufactures millions of ballpoint
pens a day! |
History
of Ball Point Pens