i left england in 1966. at that time i was just learning to write with pen and ink. a little inkwell on my desk, a small fountain pen and some blotting paper to soak up the excess. when i came to canada i switched to hb pencils and bic pens or as my mum and dad called them at the time “biros”. i always wondered where the name biro came from and it wasn’t until today that i discovered that it is the name of two brothers - lászló and georg bíró, hungarian refugees living in argentina, who - like all clever people - were able to see a solution to a problem that already existed and were able to see an application of that solution to a problem outside of its usual purpose. what they saw was an idea based on the quick-drying inks newspapers use. to help distribute the ink they developed a tiny and precisely ground ball bearing to solve two problems: how to distribute ink evenly from the cartridge to the paper for writing, and then how to make sure that the rest of the ink stayed inside the cartridge.
the second world war war drove the brothers to argentina where they made contact with an englishman named harry martin who was equally clever and saw in the work of the biro brothers, a solution to a problem the r.a.f. was having with pens that leaked due to changes in atmospheric pressure. and so it was that on june 10, 1943, with martin's financial savvy, the brothers biro patented the pen that is now in the hands of millions of students, office workers, writers, and spitball firing kids.
i have no idea how many thousands of miles of writing i have covered with a bic medium point and while i have many pens and i am especially fond of some that have nice grips and lovely smooth glossy ink, i still love the bic medium (check out my earlier entry on thursday, december 13, 2007) which without a doubt is the quintessential ballpoint pen.
No comments:
Post a Comment