- May 1st 1995 - *4 years old*
Hello, My name is Tecna, I was born on the 16th December; My fairy sign is Tritoh, I come from Zenith, The technology planet.. Ooh.. And i love science!
You know, most of the inventions that changed the world carry an interesting story behind them. Understanding the forces that pushed such inventions should also enable us to handle better modern innovations.
Let’s find more about the invention of the ballpoint pen!
Necessity is the mother of invention, no doubt.
Ladislao Biro, an Hungarian, was a sculptor, a painter and a journalist. But he was also a printer’s proof reader, and the need to incessantly refill his fountain pen from a bottle of ink was driving him crazy.
In the early 1930s he and his brother Georg, a chemist, started experimenting with a pen that would not need to be refilled and would not smudge the pages.
Biro had noticed that the type of ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. He decided to create a pen using the same type of ink. The thicker ink would not flow from a regular pen nib and Biro had to devise a new type of point. He did so by fitting his pen with a tiny ball bearing in its tip. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. This principle of the ballpoint pen actually dates back to an 1888 patent owned by John J. Loud for a product to mark leather. However, this patent was commercially unexploited. Laszlo Biro first patented his pen in 1938.
In 1943 the two brothers moved to Argentina, and there they found someone willing to finance their invention. They started selling ballpoint pens in Argentina under the name of Birome, and soon they opened a factory in England to provide pens to the Royal Air Force.
The pen used to be publicized as the only pen that could write under the water. In the first promotional event 5000 customers (who apparently longed to write under water) gathered in a square to watch the demonstration. After a couple of years BIC Corporation bought the company, and the rest is history.
This is just telling you one of my favourite things!
My favourite videogame is Return of the Tecno-Zombies circa 1989.
I'm smart for my age, I know Pi already!
See ya for the next Entry
Tecna x x
Tecna's Diary, Tecna's personal diaries 5+ to see this diary!!
Jan 3 2008, 6:41 PM
By dragonfire
Thanx Fa
}
