The idea for ballpoint pens has been around since 1888, but the pens weren't made until the 1940s.
Nowadays, ballpoint pens are commonplace. They are so inexpensive to purchase that they are given away as promotional items. Like any discovery, it began with an idea. John Loud, a tanner, patented the roller-ball-tip pen idea in 1888. The purpose of the pen was to mark leather hides, but the pen was never produced. Over the next generation, 350 ideas for roller ball-tip pens were patented, according to The Great Idea Finder website, but none of the pens ever made it to market. A common problem with these early pens was that the ink either leaked or clogged.
The First Ballpoint Pen
In 1935, Ladislas Biro, a Hungarian, was frustrated with how much time he spent filling his fountain pens to write his newspaper articles and then cleaning up ink smudges on the paper. Biro and his brother, Georg, started experimenting to find a better formulation of ink that they could use and a better-designed pen that could go longer before needing to be refilled. The Biros eventually immigrated to Argentina and opened a manufacturing plant there in 1943. The Biro pen used gravity to pull the ink onto the roller ball. This meant that the pen needed to be held upright to write, but even then the ink sometimes ran too heavy. The first ballpoint pen failed.
Improvements
The Biros didn't give up. They started working on new ink formulas and new pen designs. They hit upon the idea to use capillary action to feed the ink into the roller ball rather than gravity. The roller ball had a rough surface so that it acted like a sponge holding the ink. The ink was also improved to flow more smoothly, thus the pen could be held at a slant. This version worked and sold throughout Argentina, though it wasn't a commercial success.
Commercial Success
American Milton Reynolds saw the Biro pen when he was traveling in Argentina. By this time, many of the pen patents had expired so Reynolds set about copying much of the design of the Biro pen. Reynolds made a deal with Gimbels department store to sell the pen and then set up a manufacturing operation. The pen went on sale in October 1945 for $12.50. More than 5,000 people were waiting in line when the store opened to buy their own pens, and the initial stock of 10,000 pens sold out the first day.
Price Drops
With the fast success of the ballpoint pen, other manufacturers quickly entered the market. Claims, many false, flew around each new launch as each brand tried to differentiate itself from the others. Many of the pens suffered from the same problem as the Biro pen. Buyers quickly realized that the pens couldn't live up to all the hype. Demand dropped, and so did the price. What once sold for $12.50 was selling for only 19 cents within a few years of its release.
Perfected
Patrick Frawley was an unemployed chemist who met Fran Seech who was trying to develop better ink in his spare time. Frawley recognized the potential in Seech's pen ink formulas and bought the formulas in 1949. He started the Frawley Pen Company and began manufacturing pens with the improved ink. With some risky and imaginative marketing, Frawley's ballpoint pen sales took off, and he eventually renamed his company PaperMate.
Another individual who worked to perfect the ballpoint pen was Marcel Bich. Bich was a Frenchman who set out to make a good quality, inexpensive pen. Bich offered the Biro brothers a royalty on their patent and began studying the design. He came out with the inexpensive ballpoint Bic pen in 1952.
