Most sources say that László Bíró invented the ballpoint pen in 1938. What many don’t bother telling us is that he was the inventor of the modern ballpoint pen. Some sources tell us that John J. Loud was issued U.S. Patent #392,046 for a ballpoint pen 50 years earlier but they don’t tell us much more. Curious, I took a closer look at Loud, who described his pen this way on his patent application:
“My invention consists of an improved reservoir or fountain pen, especially useful, among other purposes, for marking on rough surfaces such as leather, wood, coarse wrapping-paper, and other articles where an ordinary pen could not be used.”
When Was the Ballpoint Pen Invented?
It was that very ability to mark on rough surfaces that made Loud’s pen impractical for writing on smooth ones. Loud owned a leather-tanning business. Part of the process of producing leather goods is cutting and trimming the hides. Loud was fed up having to draw patterns with pencils that broke and pens that leaked, so he invented his own writing instrument.
Two things set Loud’s pen apart
- It did not have a nib, the pointy tip on fountain pens where ink is put to paper.
- It had a tip that retracted into the barrel so it needed no cap. Click and the tip came out for writing. Click and the tip retracted.
Loud built a metal socket that held a small metal ball
The friction of being drawn across a surface rotated the ball within the socket. As the ball turned, gravity fed the ink to the ball which transferred it to the surface. It was an ideal solution for drawing on animal hides and worked well on many other surfaces, too. But it ripped writing paper to shreds.
Inventors of all kinds climbed on board
Some tried to improve on the mechanism while others searched for the Goldilocks of inks. It couldn’t be too thin, or it would leak and spill. It couldn’t be too thick, because the ball would clog. It had to have just the right sticky thickness to flow without smearing or clotting. The next challenge was to get it to consistently write smoothly and evenly.
It would be another 43 years before László Bíró invented the modern ballpoint pen
Bíró’s problem was different than Loud’s because he was a newspaper editor. He marked up lots of newsprint and wanted a pen (an ink, actually) that dried on contact with paper and didn’t smudge. He and his chemist brother György mated a better ink with a better ball-bearing. It rolled easily and fit so snugly that it kept air out of the reservoir so the ink wouldn’t dry out.
The ink was delivered to the ball by capillary action
Botanists tell us that’s how plants magically move water uphill from the roots to the leaves and flowers. The capillary action of Bíró’s better ball delivered his better ink smoothly and evenly on all types of paper.
The Bíró brothers and a friend built a factory in Buenos Aires, Argentina
There they started manufacturing what they called the Birome. They enjoyed great success, becoming the capped ballpoint pen preferred by the fliers of the RAF and the USAF in World War Two.
Then up jumped Milton Reynolds, an entrepreneurish type with a history of successes, failures, and stunts
The ballpoint pen wasn’t sold in the U.S. yet, but American flyboys had brought some home and they were sold in other countries, so they were around. Reynolds saw one of the Bírós and had a vision that the ballpoint pen would go viral. He created his own flashy Reynolds Rocket. It was a capped ballpoint pen with a clip to hold it securely in a pocket. The ribbed barrel was made of shiny, space-agey aluminum.
Reynolds gambled that it would become an instant hit with consumers. He arranged to sell his ballpoint pens through Gimbel’s, a Macy’s rival, and ran an ad in the New York Times pricing the pen at the equivalent of more than $100 in today’s money.
Some sources claim the initial supply of 8,000 pens sold out the first day when more than 5,000 people swarmed Gimbel’s, spending $100,000 on Reynolds Rockets
Regular readers take numbers like those with grains of salt, because they’re only estimates and only good for illustrative purposes. Reynolds-pens.com says 50 New York police officers had to be assigned to crowd control.
You’ll notice from the “Got a rocket in your pocket?” ad that Reynolds was no slouch at promotion, either. Who knew he could get away with such a blatantly phallic and borderline salacious ad back then?
The clicking ballpoint
These are the kind seen in pocket protectors* next to the mechanical pencils in the early days of NASA’s Mission Control Center. In 1950, the Frawley Pen Company claimed an employee of theirs invented the first pen with “a retractable ballpoint tip.” We know better, because Loud’s pen had one 60 years earlier.
Frawley added improvements and started manufacturing and selling his Paper-Mate** pens
His pens had a retractable point activated by clicking a button, and their cartridges were filled with a special-formula faster-drying ink. These were preferred by people tired of how easily cheap ballpoint pens smeared and smudged. Clickable ballpoint pens continue to annoy millions when handled by inconsiderate people in offices around the world.
Then along came Marcel Bich, pronounced bic in the U.S. and beek in France
He thought there was a market for cheap disposable pens, and he was right. He bought the Bíró brothers’ patent rights and turned out the first of his billions of Bic pens. A clever fellow, Bich applied the same idea to lighters and razors and became the King of the Disposables. He made so much money that he was able to chase yacht racing’s ultimate event, the America’s Cup, four times, all unsuccessfully. Call me Ishmael, but some say Bich was Ahab-style obsessed.
—-
* Along with the slide rule, the pocket protector became a symbol of smart students, the ones the cool kids liked to call dorks and nerds and pencil-necked geeks. Ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils were clipped and unclipped to and from shirt pockets, misshaping and wearing the fabric. Pocket protectors kept shirt pockets from wearing out and were much cheaper than shirts. The cool kids ended up selling aluminum siding and timeshares while the scientists and mathematicians invented cool stuff and went on to live the good life in coastal communities.
** Frawley’s other pen, the Fisher Space Pen, wrote upside down in zero-gravity, at extreme temperatures, and even underwater. It has been in constant use on all NASA manned space flights since 1970.
The author is a researcher, teacher, and writer who looks at old things in new ways, sees the commonplace in greater detail, makes connections where others see none, and explains complex subject matter in simple, conversational language. Click here for the LetsTakeACloserLook home page, where you have free, unlimited access to all of his more than 400 weekly articles written since 2016. Send your email address and you will receive each week’s column in your mailbox every Monday.
Bonus
Fountain pens leak in airplanes because of the changes in cabin pressure. The obvious solution is to make sure yours is not full, so the ink has room to expand when the pressure drops. Except this obvious solution, like so many others, doesn’t work. The way to keep fountain pens from leaking while you’re aloft in a small metal tube filled with germs from around the world is to fill the tank completely. And that, friends, contradicts what humans like to call common sense. Oh, and for safety’s sake, keep the nib pointed upright and put the pen in a zippered baggie.
