Ballpoint pen development history

The earliest name of the ball-point pen appeared in 1888. An American journalist named John Lauder once designed a pen that uses a ball as a nib, but he failed to make it into a product convenient for people to use.
Commercialized non-writing ballpoint pens were also sold on the British market in 1895, but they were not popular because of their narrow uses. In 1916, a new type of ballpoint pen was also designed and manufactured in Germany. Its structure is close to that of today's ballpoint pen, but its performance is poor, which has not attracted widespread attention.
Hungarian journalist Radislo Biro is very aware of the problems with ordinary pens. According to Biro, when he visited a newspaper, he came up with the idea of replacing a traditional ink pen with a pen that uses fast-drying ink. Newspaper inks dry almost instantaneously without leaving stains. Biro vowed to apply similar ink to a new type of writing instrument. In order to prevent sticky ink from blocking his pen, he proposed to install a small metal ball that can rotate on the top of a tube containing this fast-drying ink. The metal ball will serve two functions: as a cap to prevent the ink from drying out. Allow ink to flow from the pen at a controlled rate. In June 1943, Biro and his brother Georg (a chemist) applied for a new patent from the European Patent Office and produced the first commercial ballpoint pen, the Biro ballpoint pen. Later, the British government purchased the right to use the patented ballpoint pens, making them available to the Royal Air Force crew. In addition to being more sturdy than traditional fountain pens, ballpoint pens can also be used at low altitudes (at high altitudes, traditional fountain pens can overflow ink). This received a good effect in the Royal Air Force, making the Biro ballpoint pen highly acclaimed. In World War II, this ballpoint pen was widely used in the army due to its ruggedness and ability to adapt to battlefield environments.
In the United States, Milton Reynolds introduced a new ballpoint pen in 1945 and successfully put it into commercial production for the first time to replace the fountain pen that was still popular at the time. The ballpoint pen uses a small ball to release a very dense gelatin-based ink onto paper. Renault ballpoint pen is a simple writing tool, and it is marketed as "the first pen capable of writing underwater". Renault sold 10,000 when it first introduced its new ballpoint pen. These IPO ballpoint pens are very expensive ($ 10 each), mainly because they use new technology.
In 1945, the first cheap ballpoint pen was produced. At that time, Frenchman Marcel Bich developed an industrial process for making ballpoint pens, which drastically reduced unit costs. In 1949, Bich introduced his ballpoint pen in Europe. He named the ballpoint pens "BIC," a simplified version of his name that is easy to remember. Ten years later, BIC sold its ballpoint pens to the US market for the first time. Consumers were initially reluctant to buy BIC ballpoint pens because other manufacturers have already introduced many ballpoint pens in the US market. To dispel consumer hesitation, BIC has launched an exciting national television campaign to educate consumers about this ballpoint pen "once, once again!" Ballpoint pen. BIC also posted a TV commercial depicting their pen shot from a rifle, strapped to skates and even mounted on a jackhammer. Within a year, competition forced the price of each pen to drop below 10 cents. BIC produces millions of ballpoint pens every day!
Ballpoint pen is a writing tool that uses the rotation of steel balls to write ink on paper. After the Second World War, ballpoint pens were introduced to China. The savvy businessman advertised "ball-point pens" and used the power of the atomic bomb exploding in Japan to open up sales. In fact, the "ball-point pen" has nothing to do with the atom, only the pronunciation is similar. Ballpoint pens quickly became popular in the world. Japan alone consumes 400 million ballpoint pens a year. The reason why the ball-point pen can write is because the steel ball in the pen tip can bring the quick-drying ink out and transfer it to the paper when it is rolling. It is said that the dry ink contained in the ball-point pen core of Japan is enough to write 20,000 characters. However, after more words are written, the gap between the steel ball and the steel tube will gradually increase, so that the ink will leak out of the gap, and often stain the clothes, etc., which is very unpleasant.
Ballpoint pen
Ballpoint pen
A small business owner in Japan came up with a trick: less dry ink, so that the ink in the pen core can only be used up to write more than 10,000 words, and then the problem of oil leakage from the ballpoint pen core is solved. So he applied for a patent and specialized in producing a short ballpoint pen core and ballpoint pen, which was welcomed by customers. This method of solving problems seems to be a kind of cut corners, but it is essentially an innovation. It is an ideological and methodological innovation to solve problems that people couldn't solve at the time.
Ballpoint pens were more expensive than pens in the 1950s, and they were not willing to throw them away after use. They could be refilled in a special pen store and continued to be used. It is said that Bilo, a Hungarian, is a proofreader of a printing factory. Because the printed proofs have a lot of water content, they can be changed with a pen, and the words are easy to seep and blur. Therefore, he used steel balls to cover thin ink tubes for writing. , It is not easy to cause previous problems. Later, Billow provided his invention to the Royal Air Force and the first ballpoint pens were made by a British aircraft manufacturer. Until World War II, Americans adopted Bilo's invention. In 1916, the new ball-point pen designed by the German Lisberg was not promoted. Until the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. military industry department proposed to create a pen that is suitable for high-altitude writing, does not leak water, is not affected by cold and heat, can store a large amount of ink, and does not need to be filled. In 1944, the Chicago businessman Renault saw that this was an excellent opportunity to make a fortune. Because of his active mind, he invited people to make improvements to Lisbow's pen, and achieved success in about a year. At that time, the United States lost the atomic bomb in Japan. He advertised his pen with the atomic bomb and named it atomic pen, which quickly swept the world.