Bíró and the Ballpoint

In Britain the ballpoint pen is simply a biro, with a lower-case b, after its Hungarian inventor. The story of how a Budapest journalist's irritation with fountain pens became one of the most widely used objects in the world is a good test of the distinctions in Chapter 1: who had the idea, who built it, and who made it a success. Names, dates and details are from general knowledge and flagged for checking.

A Journalist and a Problem

László József Bíró was born in Budapest in 1899 (check) and worked at various times as a journalist, editor and hypnotist among other occupations (check the list, since accounts differ). He is said to have noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried almost at once and left the paper smooth, whereas the ink in fountain pens was slow to dry, smudged, and often blotted (check the story, which is the usual one). The thought was to put a quick-drying ink in a pen.

• The problem. Thick, quick-drying ink does not flow through the narrow nib of a fountain pen.
• The idea. A tiny ball held in a socket at the tip, rolling against the paper and picking up ink from a reservoir behind it as it turns (check the origin of the idea, which is traditionally linked to children's marbles rolling through a puddle).
• The help. His brother György, a chemist, is said to have worked on the ink (check).

Not the First Ballpoint

Bíró was not the first to think of a rolling-ball pen. An American, John J. Loud, patented a ballpoint pen for marking leather in 1888, and other patents followed (check the names and dates). They were not practical for writing, because the ink and the ball mechanism did not work well enough. The Bíró pen was the first to succeed as a writing instrument, which is exactly the "success" in Chapter 1's three-way distinction.

Patent and Emigration

Bíró took out a patent in Hungary in the 1930s, with a British patent in 1938 (check the dates and the countries). As political conditions in Europe worsened, he left Hungary around 1940 and settled in Argentina, where he continued the work and took out a patent in 1943 (check the dates and route; accounts say he was Jewish or had Jewish connections and left because of the war, check and treat with care). In Argentina a company was formed to make the pens under the Bíró name (check the company and its partners).

The RAF and the British Biro

The British connection began in the Second World War. The Royal Air Force is said to have wanted pens that would not leak at high altitude, which fountain pens did, and the ballpoint pen suited aircrew (check the story and its details). A British businessman, Henry George Martin, acquired the rights, and pens were made in Britain from the mid-1940s under the name Biro (check the names, the firm and the dates). The first British pens were expensive novelties before prices fell sharply in the following years.

A Household Word

In Britain, Ireland and several other countries the ballpoint pen is called a biro, and the word is used without a capital, an example of a brand or inventor's name becoming an ordinary noun (check that the capitalisation is the common usage, and the legal status of the name). In Argentina the day of the inventor (Día del Inventor) is celebrated on Bíró's birthday, 29 September (check). He died in Buenos Aires in 1985 (check).

Exercises