Working as I do, for an organization that gives promotional pens, I are likely to take ballpoint pens with no consideration. It wasn’t till the opposite day once I came across a fountain pen that my Mom had used to put in writing letters to my Father throughout World Warfare II, that I turned interested by how the ever present ballpoint pen got here into being.
In 1888, an American leather-based tanner named John Loud patented a roller-ball pen for marking leather-based hides. It was by no means produced nor was any of the opposite pens based mostly upon 350 patents over the subsequent 30 years. The ink was the issue -either it was too skinny and leaked or it was too thick and it clogged.
In 1935, two Hungarian brothers, Laszlo and George Biro, invented an improved model of the ballpoint pen. On the time, Laszlo was an editor at a small newspaper. He was very annoyed by the period of time that he wasted filling his fountain pens and by the truth that the tip of his pens often scratched or tore the newsprint paper. George was a chemist, and collectively, they created new pen designs and ink formulations for use in them.
Whereas vacationing on the seashore shortly thereafter, the Biro brothers met Augustine Justo, the President of Argentina. He urged them to open a manufacturing facility in Argentina. When World Warfare II erupted in Europe just a few years later, Laszlo and George fled to Argentina, however first stopped in Paris the place they obtained a patent for his or her pen.
By 1943, the Biros had patented their pen in Argentina and arrange a producing facility, however the Biro Pen, because it got here to be identified, was a failure. Like different ballpoint pens earlier than it, the pen relied on gravity to feed ink to the curler ball. That required that the pen be held in an upright place to put in writing and the ink move was nonetheless unreliable. The brothers went again to the drafting board and got here up with a brand new design for the ink cartridge that used capillary motion fairly than gravity to ship ink to the textured curler ball. The newly-designed pen went in the marketplace a 12 months later, and though the brand new design solved the issues, the pen was not a giant business success and the Biros ran out of cash.
It was, nonetheless, highly regarded with American and British fighter pilots who favored the pens as a result of they’d write at excessive altitudes and didn’t want refilling like fountain pens. The British Authorities licensed the pen for the RAF and the US Division of State despatched samples of the pen to quite a lot of American pen producers so they may develop the same pen. In an try and nook the market, the Eberhard Faber Firm paid the Biro brothers $500,000 for the U.S. rights to fabricate their ballpoint pen. Eberhard Faber offered the patent rights to the pen to the Eversharp Firm, allegedly for $1,000,000, which started an in depth marketing campaign to introduce the pen to America.
In a shocking end-run, a fifty-four 12 months previous salesman from Chicago, Milton Reynolds, turned the primary American producer to efficiently market the ballpoint pen. Reynolds had visited Argentina, the place he had seen the Biro’s pen in shops and thought that the pen would promote in America. Reynolds ignored the Biro patents, lots of which had both expired or had by no means been correctly filed within the U.S. and arrange a manufacturing facility. In a daring advertising transfer, he made a take care of Gimbels to be the primary retailer to promote the pen. On the primary day that the pen went on sale, 5,000 prospects confirmed up at Gimbels and bought all the 10,000 pens that the shop had in inventory at over $10.00 per pen!
Whereas Reynolds made thousands and thousands of pens within the months that adopted, ballpoint pens fell out of favor with the general public as they found lots of the identical issues with the pens nonetheless existed. Any person wanted to invent a pen that was {smooth} writing, dried rapidly, did not skip or fade and, most essential of all, did not leak.
Two males, Patrick J. Frawley, Jr. and Fran Seech solved the issue. Seech was an unemployed chemist who misplaced his job when the pen firm he labored for went out of enterprise. Working in his own residence laboratory, he lastly developed the profitable ballpoint pen ink. Frawley, was so impressed with Seech’s ink, he bought the system and began the Frawley Pen Firm in 1949. Frawley’s pen not solely had smear-proof ink, it additionally had a retractable level. An imaginative advertising marketing campaign ensued and shortly Frawley’s pen, which he named Paper-Mate, took off. Different manufacturers, akin to Parker quickly adopted swimsuit.
The opposite particular person to assist revive the ballpoint pen was a French maker of penholders and circumstances, Marcel Bich. Not solely was he appalled by the poor high quality, but in addition by the excessive price. He did, nonetheless, acknowledge that the ballpoint pen was a real innovation and resolved to create a low-priced, top-quality pen. Bich went to the Biro brothers and struck a deal to pay them a royalty on their patent after which spent two years finding out each element of each ballpoint pen in the marketplace.
Lastly, in 1952, Bich was able to unveil his new pen. It was a cheap clear-barreled, smooth-writing, non-leaking pen referred to as the Ballpoint Bic. The general public accepted it with open arms. By the late 1950’s, BIC had captured 70% of the European market.
At present, BIC dominates the market, with different producers like Parker, Sheaffer and Waterman capturing the smaller marketplace for upscale fountain Plantable pens and ballpoint pens. The trendy model of Laszlo and George Biro’s pen – the BIC Crystal – sells greater than 14,000,000 items day by day. Biro remains to be the generic title for the ballpoint pen in a lot of the world. And lastly, Parker black ink ballpoint pens will produce over 28,000 linear toes of writing – greater than 5 miles – earlier than operating out of ink.
So the subsequent time somebody offers you a promotional pen otherwise you purchase one on the retailer, bear in mind the superb story of the Biro brothers and their reward to the world, the ballpoint pen.