The ballpoint pen was invented for a long time by different people in different countries. The American John Loud found the correct principle of operation, the Hungarian Laszlo Biro made the first workable model, and Japanese engineers created a completely perfect design.
The history of the ballpoint pen is not as simple as it might seem, and is much older than the officially documented one.
Background
The idea of a ballpoint pen, working on an oil-based paste ink, can be traced back to … Holland in the 17th century! The sailors of the then "mistress of the seas" needed writing instruments that were unbreakable, not spilled, and which could be used in a storm when rolling. The Netherlands was almost the firstborn of the European industrial revolution.
However, the level of development of the then mechanical engineering and chemical technology did not allow the creation of a device suitable for the needs of practice. As well as a marine chronometer for accurate determination of longitude. Hans Christian Huygens himself worked on it in vain, but the idea, correct in principle, was realized only in the 19th century.
At the same time, when the accuracy of metalworking reached an acceptable value, and chemists could accurately develop substances of complex composition, the principle of operation of a ballpoint pen was also patented. Exact name, date, and country - October 30, 1888, John Loud, USA.
Laud correctly formulated the main highlight of the "ball": the forces of viscous friction and surface tension in a thick liquid will not allow the ball, when pressed by hand, to rest against the upper neck of its hole, jam and block the flow of ink. Laud also determined the physicochemical requirements for ink: they must be thixotropic, that is, they must liquefy from mechanical loads - friction, pressure. The ballpoint nib will never dry out just when filled with thixotropic ink.
Pine rosin is a good example of a thixotropic substance. If you run your finger over a piece with pressure, then at first you feel roughness, as if you are driving along a solid body. But then the finger begins to slide, as if on paraffin or soap, although the piece has not yet heated up to softening.
Start
Further, the efforts of the inventors went more along the path of improving the composition of ink. The first workable structure suitable for mass production was created in 1938 by the Hungarian journalist László József Bíró, who lived in Argentina. In Argentina, ballpoint pens are still called "biroms". However, the Anglo-Saxons dispute its priority, referring to the US patent dated June 10, 1943, issued to Milton Reynolds.
Reynolds didn't seem to know about Biro's pen, and developed a similar design and ink on his own. He worked for the needs of the United States Air Force and England. Their bombardment armada flew at high altitudes, the pressurized cabin did not yet exist, the pilots spent many hours in oxygen masks. Conventional fountain pens flowed under reduced atmospheric pressure, and pencils were inconvenient to use.
In fact, there is no reason for a patent dispute here, the "ball" was invented by Biro. But the fact that Biro's priority was contested on the grounds that he was a citizen of fascist Hungary and lived in a formally neutral Argentina, but secretly and actively helping Hitler, looks unsightly. Of course, no one denies or belittles the crimes of Nazism, but technology is in no way to blame for them.
Further, the "ball" was simplified and cheapened by Marcel Bich in France in 1953. He proposed to make a rod - an ampoule of ink - with thick walls, and use it as a pen body. This is how the still widespread disposable cheap pens BIC appeared, only the surname of the inventor is already written in English transcription.
For a long time, ballpoint pens were forbidden to be used in primary school. They wrote not so well, they were often clogged with fluff from the paper, and the kids, who immediately began to write with "balls", tore off the handwriting forever.
Modernity
The final point in the improvement of the ballpoint pen was set by the specialists of the Japanese company Ohto Co in 1963. They began to make a rolled hole in which the ball was placed, not round in cross-section, but in the form of three converging channels. The design of the nibbler of a modern ballpoint pen is shown in the figure. Such a pen can write on almost any ink-holding material, and will not get clogged, even if it is used to paint a large wad of cotton wool.
Unfortunately, the names of the inventors are unknown: according to Japanese corporate rules, all intellectual property developed in the company belongs to the company. The true inventor, under the threat of severe punishment, cannot claim authorship, even in private conversation.
Improvements
In 1984, another Japanese firm, Sakura Color Products Corp., replaced the oil-based ink with gel-based synthetic ones, while increasing the bead diameter to 0.7 mm. This is how the rollerball, the sister of the "ball", appeared. You can write with a rollerball literally without pressure, even on glass, polished metal and wet packaging cardboard, and the ink trail is clearer than from the "ball".
With the beginning of space flights, astronauts faced a problem: pens, including ballpoint pens, did not write in zero gravity, and graphite pencils produced shavings and conductive dust. Soviet cosmonauts used wax pencils for a long time, American astronauts, up to flights to the moon - special mechanical ones, $ 100 apiece at the then exchange rate.
However, back in 1967, entrepreneur Paul Fisher offered NASA his Zero Gravity Pen, or Space Pen. The ball in it was made of tungsten carbide (we know it as win). The entire writing unit was manufactured with precision precision. The ampoule with ink (cartridge) is hermetically sealed, it contains nitrogen under a pressure of 2.4 atm. Ink with a pronounced thixotropy; they are separated from the gas by a viscous movable plug.
The development of the AG7 Space Pen is one of the legends of NASA, the reason for his accusations and anecdotes about him. AG7 cost … $ 1,000,000! Although already the prototype of Fischer did not cause any complaints from the astronauts. Models currently available commercially range from $ 6 to $ 100. They write on anything in the temperature range from –30 to +120 degrees Celsius in air, in a vacuum and under water. The guaranteed service life is 120 years.
So who, after all?
There is a clear tendency in the history of great inventions: as a rule, it is impossible to name the name of one particular inventor. Exceptions, such as the inventor of rubber, Charles Goodyear, who literally randomly "boiled" sulfur into raw rubber, are extremely rare. Most of the experts simply avoid priority discussions.
AS Popov and Guglielmo Marconi, for example, did not touch upon priority issues in their correspondence, they discussed the problems of radio engineering. Only once did Marconi in a public report say: his English patent gives him the right to commercial use of radio in Great Britain, and Popov nevertheless transmitted and received the world's first radio message.
So it is with a ballpoint pen. It would be most correct to say: it is the fruit of many years of collective creativity of people who worked to satisfy the urgent needs of mankind.
