How do ballpoint pens work?
The nib in a ballpoint pen is normally made of a metal such as brass, steel or tungsten carbide. When it comes into contact with a piece of paper, or other writing material, the ball rotates and picks up a thin film of ink from the cartridge, which is a pressurised tube.
Prior to the ballpoint pen, which was invented in relatively recent history, all pens used a nib and a dark, watery ink called india ink. Quill pens have been around since around 600 AD, while the lead pencil was created in 1795.
Biro was not the first person to come up with the idea of a rollerball system for delivering ink to the nib of a pen. John Loud is widely believed to have patented the first ballpoint pen back in 1888, but he failed to turn it into a commercial product and so his patent lapsed.
What does it have to do with World War II?
Ladislao José Biro, the eponymous inventor, was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, and started life as László József Bíró. In fact he maintained that name until after he invented the handy ballpoint pen when, in 1940, he was forced to flee the Nazi occupationof his home country.
After escaping the hostile occupation of Hungary, Biro made his way to Argentina, where he eventually secured backing to turn the biro into a commercial product. The pen's first backer was the British accountant Henry George Martin, according to the Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology.
The first major buyer of the newly created pen was the Royal Air Force. During the Second World War the organisation ordered 30,000 of the tools, which would work at high altitudes unlike traditional fountain pens. After the war it entered commercial production.
Today, the Bic Cristal biro is the world's most popular pen. In the US, the price has remarkably stayed the same since 1959 - retailing at 19 cents despite inflation.
behind that tradition
9 June 2011
Most popular Doodle to date
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