Jessica Crabtree

September 29, 1899: Birth of Laszlo Biro (inventor of the ballpoint pen)

OK, maybe this is not exactly art-related – but who says artist’s don’t appreciate a good ballpoint?

Very few people could name the person responsible for the design of this everyday wonder, perhaps because the ballpoint has become so ubiquitous. And that’s a shame – because most of us have never had to depend on fountain pens, so we take this little stroke of genius for granted.

Biro, a  Hungarian journalist, worked with his brother to design a pen that would work with newspaper ink, which dried on contact. He first patented his ball-and-socket design in 1938. It was later licensed to the British Royal Air Force, whose World War II pilots found that they could write smoothly at high altitudes using a ballpoint, where traditional pens had unreliable ink flow. In 1950 Biro sold the rights to the French firm Bic, where the disposable ball-point is still produced today. It remains the world’s best-selling pen, crossing the 100 billion mark in 2005.