What You Need to Know About the Ballpoint Pen

Can you imagine a world without the ballpoint pen? While we take these writing instruments for granted today, it wasn't long ago when there was no such thing as a ballpoint pen. You had to use a feather and dip it into an ink pot in order to write anything out on paper. Today, there is a huge variety of different ink pens that come in all different sizes as well as various colors of ink.

The original idea and concept was first invented in 1888. A man by the name of John Loud, who was a tanner at the time, came up with the idea of a roller ball tip pen to use in marking hides. He applied for, and was granted a patent for his pen, but it was never produced or marketed. The invention just died for the time being. Over the next 30 years, there were over 300 additional patents for a ball point pen that were issued, and again, not a single one made it to market. Why? The problem was in the ink. It would either leak out of the pen or clog up and make it impossible to work with.

It wasn't until 1938, nearly 50 years to the day of Loud's patent, that the ballpoint pen would finally become a reality. Two brothers, Laszlo and Georg Biro, began working on an improved version of the pen. Then, as luck would have it, they met with the President of Argentina and showed him their pen. The President loved it and convinced the brothers to build a factory in Argentina and begin manufacturing the pens.

In 1943 the brothers were set to go. They opened up their factory, but then disaster struck. The pens didn't work as designed. In order for them to work they had to be kept straight up and down so the ink would flow down to the roller ball. If the pen was used sideways or upside down it simply would not work. And even when it did work, the flow was often times impossible to control. So, the brothers went back to work on making changes to their product. They came out with an improved model of their ballpoint pen a year later, but unfortunately they ran out of money and their work came to a screeching halt.

Things didn't turn out all bad for the Biro's though. The U.S. State Department asked all US pen companies to get to work on developing and producing a similar pen themselves. One of these pen companies, Eberhard Faber, paid $500,000 to the Biro's for all rights to their design. Eberhard quickly sold the design to the Eversharp Company, which struggled in trying to get the ballpoint pen out on the market.

During this same time period a businessman by the name of Milton Reynolds had been on vacation in Argentina and came across one of the Biro brothers' pens in a store. When he started to investigate the origin he found out that the patents had expired on it. He copied the design and went to work manufacturing it under the company name of Reynolds International Pen Company.

Reynolds pen hit the market before Eversharp's and became a big hit. In October of 1945, Reynolds made a deal with Gimbels Department Store to sell the first ballpoint pens. Gimbels took out a full page ad in the New York Times letting the public know about the pens first sale. Wow, it was a real hit! More than 5,000 people jammed the store the next day and bought out the entire stock of 10,000 pens. This was despite the fact the ballpoint pens retailed for $12.50 each.

Reynold's went on to make millions selling his pens to Gimbels for the next several years. Then, in 1949 the Frawley Pen Company came out with an improved design called the Papermate. It was the Papermate pen that set the stage of where we are today. The pen literally sold hundreds of millions and became a massive success.

Finally, in 1952 a man by the name of Michael Bich invented what is known as the BIC pen. Today, the BIC company is clearly the largest maker of ballpoint pens. Their low cost pens are a staple in every home and business around the world. From its rocky beginnings, the history of the ballpoint pen certainly is a fascinating one at that.