In this electronic age of voice mail, e-mail and cell phones, there is still no substitute for pen and
paper. Even
as you browse the Web, you probably have a pen within easy reach to jot down notes, scribble phone numbers, or even to doodle! Modern
ballpoint pens are so inexpensive that we don''t even think about them anymore -- you might have a cup on your desk that contains a dozen or so different pens that have wandered in from who knows where!
Pen Technology
A pen is a tool used for writing or drawing with a colored fluid, such as ink. A ballpoint pen is a pen that uses a small
rotating ball made of brass, steel or tungsten carbide to disperse ink as you write. It is very different than its pen predecessors -- the reed pen, quill pen, metal nib pen, and fountain pen (see A Brief History of Writing Instruments for details).
All of the pens that preceded the ballpoint used a watery, dark India ink that fed through the pen using capillary action. The problems with this technology are well-known. For example:
The ink can flow unevenly.
The ink is slow to dry. The ink is exposed to the air while it is flowing through the pen, so it cannot dry quickly or it would clog the pen.
When it does accidentally dry in the pen, the ink gums the whole thing up and requires meticulous cleaning.
When you add to this list the fact that fountain pens tend to flood when you fly on an airplane with them, you can see that all pens up until World War II presented some significant problems for their users -- the world awaited a better solution.
History of the BallpointHungarian journalist Laszlo Biro was well aware of the problems with normal pens. Biro believed that the idea of a pen using a quick-drying ink instead of India ink came to him while visiting a newspaper. The newspaper''s ink left the
paper dry and smudge-free almost immediately. Biro vowed to use a similar ink in a new type of writing instrument. To avoid clogging his pen up with thick ink, he proposed a tiny metal ball that rotated at the end of a tube of this quick drying ink. The ball would have two functions:
It would act as a cap to keep the ink from drying.
It would let ink flow out of the pen at a controlled rate.
manufactured when Frenchman Marcel Bich developed the industrial process for making the pens that lowered the unit cost dramatically. In 1949, Bich introduced his pens in Europe. He called the pens "
BIC," a shortened, easy-to-remember version of his name. Ten years later, BIC first sold its pens on the American market.
Consumers were reluctant to buy the BIC pens at first, as so many pens had been introduced in the U.S. market by other manufacturers. To counter this hesitancy, the BIC company created an exciting national television campaign to tell consumers that this ballpoint pen "Writes First Time, Every Time!," and sold it for only 29 cents. BIC also launched television ads that depicted its pens being fired from a rifle, strapped to an ice skate, and even mounted on a jackhammer. Within a year, competition forced prices down to less than 10 cents each.
Ballpoint DesignThe key to a ballpoint pen is, of course, the
ball. This ball acts as a buffer between the material you''re writing on and the quick-drying ink inside the pen. The ball rotates freely and rolls out the ink as it is continuously fed from the
ink reservoir (usually a narrow plastic tube filled with ink).
The ball is kept in place -- between the ink reservoir and the paper -- by a
socket; and while it is in tight, it still has enough room to roll around as you write. As the pen moves across the paper, the ball turns and gravity forces the ink down the reservoir and onto the ball, where it is transferred onto the paper. It''s this rolling mechanism that allows the ink to flow onto the top of the ball and roll onto the paper you''re writing on, while at the same time sealing the ink from the air so it does not dry in the reservoir.
Because the tip of a normal ballpoint pen is so tiny, it is hard to visualize how the ball and socket actually work. One way to understand it clearly is to look at a bottle of roll-on antiperspirant, which uses the same technology at a much larger scale. The typical container of roll-on has the same goals a ballpoint pen does -- it wants to keep air out of the liquid antiperspirant while at the same time making it easy to apply. At this scale, it is easy to see how the mechanism works. Here''s a shot of the ball end of a typical roll-on:
If you look inside the container, what you have is extremely simple -- the ball is exposed so it can pick up the liquid antiperspirant:
The following two photos show you how the ball fits into the socket: