Ballpoint Pen

Here is a little bit of information that I bet you didn't know.



Laszlo Biro

The Ball-point Pen was invented in 1938 by Laszlo Biro, a Hungarian journalist. He came up with his idea of making a pen that would controllably release quick-drying ink when he saw magazine printers using the type of ink to print with.So the former painter and sculptor set out to make the world’s first quick–drying pen.

Unfortunately,there were three problem with his plans. The problems were the ever growing German army,a crazy dictator with a mustache and the almost inevitable Nazi invasion. So Biro packed his bags and headed south,to Argentina and waited in exile. While hanging out in the Patagonia Region, Laszlo and his brother, Georg (a chemist),continued to work on the pen.

Finally, after trial and error many times, Laszlo had constructed the first quick-drying pen, the Biro. (It was not called the ball-point pen commonly until later.)

The pen was a success, but Biro still had some slight problems with his design. There were a few glitches with ink flow. In the original pen, the ink was ejected using Capillary Action. But in order for the ink to come out, you had to hold it almost straight up at a 90°angle to the paper instead of the way you would normally hold a pen you were writing with. This was fixed by adding a manual piston at the top of the pen that you could pump while you were writing. This would pressurize the ink. This was soon replaced with an automatic piston which would keep pressure on the ink with out the writer doing any thing. Then this feature was replaced with a vacuum tube that the ink was kept in a pressurized, air tight,thin and long,clear cylinder. This technology is still used today.

The Biro brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne who had also fled from the Nazi tirade to Argentina,filed a patenton for their pen on the 10th of June, 1941. They then started the company “Biro Pens of Argentina” who sold the“Birome Quick-Drying Pen.” Once it reached the market shelves in England in late 1941 through early 1942, the ball-point pen was widely used in WWII by the RAF (Royal Air Force), the USAAF (US Army Air Force ), the Royal Marians and the USMC for its precision writing for navigation, ability to write up-side-down,they could write something without any blotting or smudging, the change in air pressure did not effect it and you could write perfectly with it under water. Also, in the case that the pen should snap, the ink would not splatter, but simply dry and the pen would still be usable.

Since the 1940's the ballpoint pen has become the second most commonly used writing tool next to the graphite pencil. And to think that it all started in a Hungarian print shop.