From The BBC:
On 29 October 1945, the New York City branch of Gimbels department store unveiled a new product. Billions upon billions would follow in its wake.
Gimbels was the first to sell a new kind of ink pen, the design of which had taken several decades to come to fruition. The pens, made by the Reynolds International Pen Company, promised an end to the messy mishaps users of fountain pens encountered – leaking ink, smudges and pooling ink blots.
The new ballpoint pens did away with this, using a special viscous ink which dried quickly and didn’t leave smudges. At the heart of it, the rolling ball in the nib – and gravity – ensured a constant, steady stream of ink that didn’t smear or leave solid pools of ink on the page.
The new ballpoint was clean and convenient. What it wasn’t was cheap.
The new Reynolds ballpoint cost $12.50 – convert that to 2020 money and it’s more than $180 (£138.50). Today, if you were buying your pens in bulk, from stack-‘em-high superstores, you could end up with more than 1,000 for the same price.
. . . .
The creation of the ballpoint pen is usually credited to a Hungarian-Argentinian inventor László Bíró, whose name inspired a catch-all term for modern ballpoints. But it is, in fact, a lot older.
An American, John J Loud, received the first patent for a ballpoint pen back in 1888. Loud, a lawyer and occasional inventor, wanted an ink pen which would be able to write on rougher materials such as wood and leather as well as paper. His masterstroke was the revolving steel ball, which was held in place by a socket. In his 1888 patent filing, he wrote:
“My invention consists of an improved reservoir or fountain pen, especially useful, among other purposes, for marking on rough surfaces-such as wood, coarse wrapping-paper, and other articles where an ordinary pen could not be used.”
Loud’s pen was indeed able to write on leather and wood, but it was too rough for paper. The device was deemed to have no commercial value and the patent eventually lapsed.
Various inventors tried to improve on Loud’s design in the coming decade, but none were able to take it into production until Bíró in the 1930s. A journalist in Hungary, Bíró used fountain pens daily and was very familiar with their drawbacks.
“He was used to the fountain pen which was very leaky and left ink on your hands and smudged and he was very frustrated by it,” says Gemma Curtin, a curator at London’s Design Museum.
. . . .
Simply adding fountain pen ink to a ballpoint pen was not the solution, however. The ink itself needed to be rethought.
László turned to his brother, Győrgy, a dentist who was also a talented chemist. László had realised the ink used in fountain pains was too slow to dry and needed something more like the ink used on newspapers. Győrgy came up with a viscous ink which spread easily but dried quickly. What’s more, the pen used far less ink than the spotting, dripping fountain pens.
“Other people had thought of it before, but it was down to him, working with his brother – who was a good chemist – and getting the texture of the ink right,” says Curtin. “It is very like printer’s ink, and it doesn’t smudge.”
The principle at the heart of the ballpoint pen mimics the action of a roll-on deodorant – gravity and the force applied smear the rolling ball with a continuous stream of ink as the ball rolls along the writing surface When the pen isn’t used, the ball sits tight against the end of the ink reservoir, preventing air entering and drying out the ink. Most often, ballpoint pens run out of ink long before they dry out.
. . . .
László received a patent for his new pen in Britain in 1938, but World War Two put paid to plans to market his new invention. As László and his brother were Jews, they decided to flee Europe in 1941, and emigrated to Argentina. There, László returned to his new invention, helped by a fellow escapee, Juan Jorge Meyne.
The first “birome”, as it became known in Argentina, was released in 1943, while war was still raging in Europe and the Pacific. The design piqued the interest of the Royal Air Force (RAF), who put in an order for 30,000: the pens were able to be used by aircrew at high altitude unlike fountain pens, which tended to leak because of the pressure changes. Otherwise, the original pen was little-known outside its South American home – the few original models current all for sale on online auctions all hail from Argentina.
. . . .
In 1945, two US companies – the Eversharp Co and Eberhard Faber Co – teamed up to licence the new pen for the US market, having spent half a million dollars ($7.2m or £5.6m in today’s money) to sew up the rights to North and Central America. But they were too slow on the draw. American businessman Milton Reynolds was visiting Buenos Aires and was impressed with the new pen – he bought several, and on return to America set up the Reynolds International Pen Company to market a new design.
Crucially, the Reynolds design had enough changes to sidestep László Bíró’s patent, and was the first to go on sale on October of that year. It was, almost instantly, a must-have accessory. As Time magazine reported, “thousands of people all but trampled one another last week to spend $12.50 each for a new fountain pen”, noting that the new pen only needed refilling once every two years. Gimbels had ordered 50,000 of the new pens and had sold 30,000 of them by the end of the first week. According to Time, Gimbels made more than $5.6m in sales ($81m or £62m in 2020) from the new pen in the first six months.
. . . .
The masterstroke which would change the ballpoint pen forever came not from the US but from France. Michel Bich was an Italian-born French industrialist who ran a company making ballpoint pens. “No one understood better than Marcel Bich that potent 20th-century alchemy of high volume/low cost,” ran his obituary in the UK’s Independent newspaper when he died in 1994. “To this formula he added the magic catalyst of disposability. He invented nothing, but understood the mass market almost perfectly.”
Bich realised the ballpoints so far had been premium products – an alternative designed to be regularly replaced could be a lot cheaper. Bich acquired a dormant factory near Paris and set about creating his new company, Societe Bic. An advertising executive had suggested the industrialists shorten his surname to create an instantly recognisable three-letter trademark. The company’s trademark logo, the Bic Boy, had a smooth featureless orb as a face – a reference to the metal ball in the point of the pen.
“The first ballpoint pens in the UK cost around 55 shillings (£82.50/$107.50 in 2020 prices),” says Curtin. “One of Bic’s biros only cost you a shilling. It combined functionality with affordability.”
The new pen had an equally dramatic effect on the act of writing itself, says David Sax, the Canadian journalist who wrote the book The Revenge of Analog. “The ballpoint pen was the equivalent of today’s smartphone. Before then, writing was a stationary act that had to be done in a certain environment, on a certain kind of desk, with all these other things to hand that allowed you to write.
. . . .
“What the ballpoint pen did was to make writing something that could happen anywhere. I’ve written in snow and rain, on the back of an ATV and in a boat at sea and in the middle of the night,” says Sax. Biros don’t drain batteries, they don’t require plugging in in the middle of nowhere, and even the tightest pocket can accommodate them. “It only fails if it runs out of ink,” Sax adds.
Link to the rest at The BBC
I’ve had good experiences with the top of the line Brother prosumer all in ones. At work, we’ve had a MFC-J6910DW for a long time (7-8 years I think), and it’s been solid. We also have a monochrome HP LaserJet 1320 which is around 15 years old, mean for personal use, but has been chugging along fine as a workgroup printer.
At home I have the MFC-J6920DW, and it’s been solid with a few quirks. I have found that it’s worth paying the premium for Brother black ink (which is pigment ink), but use 3rd party for the color ink.
Love my Jet mini-lathe and making pens, although my skill does not match my aspirations. Agree on the feel of open grains.
I’ve been disappointed with the quality of the fountain pen kits I’ve tried. I’ve bought several relatively cheap utilitarian German fountain pens in the past few years that I’ve liked and wished I could incorporate in my own turnings. I’m tempted to dismantle a pen and turn my own body.
But that would probably contravene my policy of avoiding pens I like so well I pain to lose.
You can make your own pen out of any wood or acrylic you choose using a purchased hardware kit and a mini-lathe. See the Woodcraft catalog on the web, or look on YouTube.
Shape the pen however you like. All it has to do is match the hardware at the top and bottom. And their are a variety of hardware kits with different width nibs, middles, and tops. They all take a standard refill.
So, I have about fifty pens made from everything from cocobolo and bendee to North American red oak. There is hardware for fountain pens, but I never did one. I did one mechanical pencil, and it came out pretty well. My favorite pens are the ones with an open grain wood so you can actually see and feel the grain. Don’t see many of them around. A fat red oak sits in my pocket.
Get creative and laminate 1/8 or 1/4 strips of different wood, put it on the lathe, and you have a pen that would never be seen in any showroom, and could never be duplicated.
Not just a word, but a whole manual:
The McWilliams II Word Processor
Love it, T.
I used to use the McWilliams II – in fact I still have one in my desk drawer (the version without the eraser option) – but I found the maintenance was too high. It frequently broke down when I had no sharpening tools to hand. I now swear by the Papermate Mechanical Pencil, which I use in preference to my old yard-o-led propelling pencil as the Papermate has the built in eraser function.
I prefer fountain pens to ballpoints. I don’t know why. They are a pain in the neck, especially if you fly a lot, wear white shirts, and prefer cheap pens that you can lose every year or so without taking out a payday loan for a replacement. I got a fountain pen for my birthday when I was about ten and I’ve never liked to write with anything else ever since. I use pencils a lot too.
I love how effortless a good fountain pen makes writing feel. No cramping or pressing required. The ink just flows out.
Sorry to be a barbarian, but a Pilot G-2 (10) is my idea of an ideal flowing ink device.
My go-to flowing ink device is my Brother inkjet printer. It’s not portable and won’t work without power, but on the other hand, its output is always perfectly legible. Unless, of course, I tell it to print in a font that resembles my handwriting, which will then be my own silly damn fault.
Tom you touched a hot button.
If I hate one device from the computer age, it’s the damn printers. They are the devil’s spawn, which come to think of it, is probably cheaper than printer ink.
I come from the antediluvian era when you had to write your own driver every time a new printer model showed up on the market. And every stinking one of them was completely different with different quirks (bugs) to discover and work around. I remember poking pins with a logic probe to figure some of the beasts out. My first printer driver was an interesting puzzle to solve. The last one was a bull thistle in my shorts.
Those problems are gone now but the paper still jams whenever I’m in a hurry. And empty ink cartridges with replacements that have to be shipped in from a different planet.
If you like your Brother, good on you, man. You must be one of the blessed.
But I prefer to fill the reams of printer paper I have in a back closet with notes from my fountain pen.
And you, sir, have touched another button! Printers were my salvation. First, I wrote the Bible on the subject back in the ’00s (Mastering Digital Printing), which was a giant bestseller in How-To. Then, HP, noticing my work, came calling, and I started a 10-year consulting gig helping them launch their line of super-high-quality inkjet printers for the art & photography crowd. I still have a large-format, 12-color printer sitting next to me, but I almost completely rely on a $99 HP LaserJet for my computer printing needs. And it uses very economical black toner for its consumable vehicle onto paper medium.
To disagree with a person who knows what they are talking about, but from a different perspective, is an enlightening pleasure.
√√√ And if you ever want to know the difference between DPI, PPI, and LPI, I’m your man. Especially if you want to work that into one of your Mysteries. 😉
DPI: Damn Printer Inoperative
PPI: Poxy Printer Inoperative
LPI: Lousy Printer Inoperative
The terminology is easy once you’ve been working with the tech awhile.
A year or two ago I got tired of the large sums I was paying out all too frequently for HP ink cartridges, plus the printer had started to jam for no reason, so I laid out the extra cash for an Epson Ecotank printer. So far this has given exemplary service and has already more than paid for itself in the reduced cost of ink. It’s only 3 colour (plus black) so I’m keeping the old HP for photo printing and the like (at least until those very expensive ink cartridges I paid for run out).
Mind you, if you only want to do black and white Harald’s HP LaserJet might be a better option (though I suspect that its toner costs will be greater than those for the Ecotank, especially as I don’t forsee any need to buy new ink for several years).
I’ve been buying printers now for nearly forty years. The Brother is the first one I haven’t cursed at.
It’s the MFC-J5945DW, for what little that’s worth; wait five minutes and they’ll have a different New and Improved model with a different model number and probably different-coloured buttons or something. It’s got the ‘INKvestment Tank’, which is the Brother equivalent to Epson’s Ecotank, prints full-bleed on tabloid paper, and has a second paper tray which I keep filled with 3-hole punched paper so I won’t have to punch it myself. So far, I have not needed to punch the printer myself, either.
No arguments, PG. I consider my preference for fountain pens to be a character flaw akin to drinking craft IPA. Something I started, is too expensive and troublesome to pursue, and wish I could end, but it’s too satisfying.
I’m a big fan of Pilot mechanical pencils.
I need corrections too often to rely on ink.
I think someone should say a word in praise of the humble pencil, particularly my yard-o-led propelling pencil which has served me faithfully for about 60 years (though I really need to get a refill for the leads).
Ask and ye shall receive:
https://bookriot.com/in-praise-of-the-pencil/
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“The pencil seems the least remarkable of the writing tools we have at our disposal. A pencil is what a child is given to use by adults who don’t want pen stains on their white sofas. But many famous writers, all of them adults, wrote with pencils: Ernest Hemingway, John Steinback, Truman Capote, Joyce Carol Oats. ”
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Much more at the source.
I prefer this one, though:
https://mitchteemley.com/2018/08/30/in-praise-of-the-pencil/#:~:text=In%20Praise%20of%20the%20Pencil%20Posted%20on%20August,its%20own%20built-in%20replacement%20cartridge%20and%20delete%20feature.
“It is the most sophisticated communication device ever created, with its own built-in replacement cartridge and delete feature. No, I’m not talking about the computer, I’m talking about the pencil.
The modern pencil was invented in 1795 by Nicholas-Jacques Conte, a scientist serving under Napoleon. The key to Conte’s invention was a form of pure carbon called graphite, which the Aztecs had already used as a marker hundreds of years earlier. It was, at first, mistakenly believed to be a form of lead (hence the term “pencil lead”). It was officially relabled graphite in 1789, from the Greek word graphein, meaning “to write.”
The word pencil is older. Derived from the Latin term pencillus, “little tail,” it was first applied to the ink brushes used for writing during the Middle Ages, but was later reassigned to Conte’s marvelous new invention.
Most important of all, however, is a fact known by writers and school children for over two hundred years: the pencil, unlike the computer, provides a unique and irreplaceable form of…
Chew therapy.”
Chew therapy
One of my co-workers would chew his Bic biros, normally they were down to about 3″ before the ink ran out. We were worried about whether he was drinking the ink as well as eating the plastic (we assumed that the latter was non toxic).