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A Brief Look Into The Ballpoint Pen

A law office is full of pens. I find it amusing to be writing this but nonetheless I will.

With numerous pens around it's easy to take them for granted.

They are marvelous creations.

Ever wondered how they came to be? Well then this piece of content will satisfy your curiosity.

I discovered it all began back in the year 1888. John Loud, who was a leather tanner by trade, decided to patent a roller ball pen that he used to mark leather hides. Strangely it was never produced and none of the followup attempts at creating the ballpoint pen used either all ther way to 1918.

There was a problem.

The ink was the problem. It ended up leaking, was too thick, or it simply clogged.

It wasn't until the year 1935 when two Hungarian brothers solved the problem. Their names were George and Lazlo and they came up with a much more improved ballpoint pen.

When all of this went down Lazlo worked as an editor for a newspaper. Being in the business of writing he was frustrated.

He wasn't impressed with the amount of time he was spending filling his fountain pens and by the fact that the tip of his pens frequently tore and scratched the newsprint paper. Partnering with George who was a chemist by trade, they came up with ink formulations and pen designs. They ended up starting production for the pens in Argentina.

It is incredible that the ballpoint pen was created 100 years ago.

As time went on their pens gained a following with British and Americanfighter pilots who liked the pens because they would write at high altitudes and did not require refilling like their counterpart fountain pens did.

It turned out that the American and British governments played a part in getting the pens out to their armed forces.

Manufacturing of the pens created a war between keen business people. In the end, Milton Reynolds became the first manufacturer to market the ballpoint pen in America.

Since the Biro's were making pens in Argentina, Reynolds paid them a visit and felt the pen would sell well back home in the United States. Reynolds side-stepped the patents that the Biro's had gotten and went ahead and set up a factory in the U.S.

Stepping out with an agressive marketing move, Reynolds made a deal with Gimbels to be the first store to sell the pen. On the first day that the pen went on sale, 5,000 customers showed up at Gimbels and purchased the entire 10,000 pens that the store had in stock at over $10.00 per pen!

While Reynolds made millions of pens in the months that followed, ballpoint pens fell out of favor with the public as they discovered many of the same problems with the pens still existed. Somebody needed to invent a pen that was smooth writing, didn't skip along the paper, dried fast, and most importantly did not leak.

There were two men who came up with the winning solution. Their names were Fran Seech and Patrick J. Frawley Jr. Seech was an unemployed chemist who lost his job when the pen company he worked for went out of business. Working at home in his own lab he finally came up with the successful ballpoint pen ink.

Frawley, was so blown away with the ink that Seech made that he purchased the formula from him and began the Frawley Pen Company in 1949.

Frawley's pen not only had smear-proof ink, it also had a retractable point which was an ingenious invention.

An imaginative marketing campaign ensued and soon Frawley's pen, which he named Paper-Mate, took off. There were other brands that entered the market as well like Parker.

Marcel Bich, a French maker of pen cases and penholders also played a key role in bringing life to the ballpoint pen.

Not only was he disgusted with the poor quality, but also by the high cost. He did, however, recognize that the ballpoint pen was a true 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 and then spent two years studying every detail of every ballpoint pen on the market.

By the year 1952 Bich was finally ready to unveil his new pen.

It was an efficient, inexpensive, clear-barreled, smooth-writing pen that didn't leak called the Ballpoint Bic.

When it was released the public gobbled it up. Within years of it's debut BIC had captured 65-70% of the entire European market.

It is no suprise that BIC is the market leader for fountain pens and ballpoint pens. They even have a modern day version of the Biro pen called the BIC crystal.

You may find this piece of information interesting. BIC sells fourteen million pieces daily and a Parker black ink ballpoint pen can produce more than five miles of writing before it runs out of ink.

I suppose my hope in creating this content is that the next time you come across a ballpoint pen you remember the amazing story of how it came to be. It's truly a gift to the world.