Invention Of Ballpoint Pen

Laszlo Biro is so famous as the inventor of the first practical ballpoint pen that his name is often used as a generic term for all makes of ballpoint - and it is often overlooked that he was also a sculptor, painter, hypnotist and journalist.

The idea of the ballpoint pen was first patented in 1888 by John J. Loud (USA), but he could not devise a suitable ink feed and a practical version of his pen was never made. Other patents followed, but it was not until 1945 that Laszlo Josef Biro (Hungary-Argentina) finally managed to produce the first practical ballpoint pen; while the idea itself was not novel, he had invented a means of making it work.

Biro was born Laszlo (sometimes recorded as Ladislao) Josef Biro on 29 September 1899 in Hungary. He worked in Budapest as a journalist and artist, and during the 1930s became the editor of a cultural magazine. It was on a visit to the printing press that he began to wonder whether printers' ink, which was quick-drying and therefore less likely to smudge, could be used in a pen. Printers' ink was too thick to be used in a fountain pen, so Biro conceived the idea of replacing the traditional nib with a metal ball. He patented this idea in 1938, but this early pen was impractical. At the beginning of the Second World War Laszlo and his brother Georg fled from Hungary, first to Paris and then in 1940, to Argentina. They continued to work on the pen, and in 1943 Laszlo filed a patent for the world's first commercially practical ballpoint pen (granted 1944).

That summer Biro met British government official Henry Martin (England) in Buenos Aires. Martin thought that, because they would no leak at high altitudes, Biro's pens would be useful for RAF pilots. He bought the British rights to Biro's invention, established the Miles-Martin Pen Company, and began manufacturing the first ballpoint pens in 1944. Biro was about to launch his pen in America through Eversharp, but he had inadequate patent protection and was beaten to it by businessman Milton Reynolds (USA), who launched America's first ballpoint, the Reynolds Rocket, in 1945.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison