The history of the ballpoint pen
The Bic story really started in 1888 with a man called John Loud who was an American tanner. He invented a kind of ball point pen which he thought could write on raw-hides, sadly this wasn’t a success and the world had to wait some time for the Biro to be invented by someone else.
That someone else was Laszlo Biro. He and his brother who were Hungarian Jews who lived in the U.S.A. In America in 1938, just before the outbreak of the second world war, Laszlo produced and started marketing the Biro Pen with much success. He went into business with a French man called Marcel Birch who was very good at marketing and ended up making both men very wealthy.
Before the biro or Bic pen, the fountain pen was used and often caused problems with leakages and also the drying time of the ink used. Many are the pupils that remember the writing pens and ink-wells, blotters and stained fingers from school days and all the problems that went with them. The ball point pen was a revolution to society and quickly became very popular.
These days the ball point pen is not only used for general use with writing, but has found a new, artistic platform. Some people have the ability to utilise this medium to the extreme and beyond, take a look at this artists that we freatured earlier.