Ballpoint pens

The ballpoint pen was invented as early as the late 1800's, but was never widely used because the ink either leaked or clogged at the tip, leaving big, blotchy smudges on the paper...hardly an improvement over fountain pens.

Then in 1935 an improved version was invented in Hungary by Ladislas Biro and his brother, Georg. While vacationing at the seashore, the Biro brothers met Augustine Justo, the president of Argentina. Justo, urged the men to set up a factory in Argentina. They didn't do so until the outbreak of WWII, when they fled from Europe to Argentina.

Once in Argentina, the Biros found several investors willing to finance their invention, and in 1943 they had set up a manufacturing plant. The pens were a failure. The pen had to be held directly upright, and even then it leaked or clogged. So their next design let the rough "ball" at the end of the pen act like a metal sponge, and with this improvement ink could flow more smoothly to the ball, and the pen could be held at a slant rather than straight up.

One year later, the Biros were selling their new, improved ballpoint pen throughout Argentina. But it still was not a smashing success, and the men ran out of money.

American flyers had the greatest interest in the pen, flyers who had been to Argentina during World War II. The pen was ideal because it would work well at high altitudes and, unlike fountain pens, did not have to be refilled frequently. The U.S. Department of State sent specifications to several American pen manufacturers asking them to develop a similar pen. In an attempt to corner the market, the Eberhard Faber Company paid the Biro brothers $500,000 for the rights to manufacture their ballpoint pen in the United States. But there were still bugs in the design.

The competition among pen manufacturers during the mid-1940s became hectic, with each one claiming new and better features. One said his pen could write under water, another said his could write through ten carbon copies, etc. However, they all had problems. The pen needed to regain the public’s trust, and somebody would have to invent one that was smooth writing, quick drying, nonskipping, nonfading, and most important: didn’t leak.

Finally Patrick Frawley and Fran Seech came along; two independent pen company owners. Frawley initiated an imaginative and risky advertising campaign. He instructed his salesmen to barge into the offices of retail store buyers and scribble all over the executives’ shirts with one of the new pens. Then the salesman would offer to replace the shirt with an even more expensive one if the ink did not wash out entirely. The shirts came clean and the promotion worked. As more and more retailers accepted the pen, which Frawley named the "Papermate," sales began to skyrocket. Within a few years, the Papermate pen was selling in the hundreds of millions.

The other man to bring the ballpoint pen successfully back to life was Marcel Bich, a French manufacturer of pen cases. Bich recognized that the ballpoint was a firmly established innovation and he resolved to design a high-quality pen at a low price that would scoop the market. He went to the Biro brothers and arranged to pay them a royalty on their patent. Then for two years Marcel Bich studied the detailed construction of every ballpoint pen on the market, often working with a microscope. By 1952 Bich was ready to introduce his new wonder: a clear-barreled, smooth-writing, non-leaky, inexpensive ballpoint pen he called the "Ballpoint Bic." The public accepted it without complaint, and today it is as standard a writing implement as the pencil. In England, they are still called Biros, and many Bic models also say "Biro" on the side of the pen, as a testament to their primary inventors.

Blanche

Sources:

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/ballpen.htm

http://www.essortment.com/all/historyofbal_rgos.htm

http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo30/history_ballpoint_pen.htm