A
ballpoint pen is a
writingWriting is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
instrument with an internal
inkInk is a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill...
reservoir and a sphere for a point. The internal chamber is filled with a
viscousViscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear or tensile stress. In everyday terms , viscosity is "thickness" or "internal friction". Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while honey is "thick", having a higher viscosity...
ink that is dispensed at its tip during use by the rolling action of a small sphere. The sphere, usually from 0.5 mm to 1.2 mm in diameter, may be made of
brassBrass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...
,
steelSteel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
,
tungsten carbideTungsten carbide is an inorganic chemical compound containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms. Colloquially, tungsten carbide is often simply called carbide. In its most basic form, it is a fine gray powder, but it can be pressed and formed into shapes for use in industrial machinery,...
, or any durable, hard (nondeformable) material.
History
The manufacture of economical, reliable ballpoint pens arose from experimentation, modern chemistry, and the precision manufacturing capabilities of 20th century technology. Many patents worldwide are testaments to failed attempts at making these pens commercially viable and widely available. The ballpoint pen went through several failures in design throughout its early stages.
The first
patentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
on a ballpoint pen was issued on 30 October 1888, to John Loud, a leather tanner, who was attempting to make a writing instrument that would be able to write on his leather products, which then-common
fountain penA fountain pen is a nib pen that, unlike its predecessor the dip pen, contains an internal reservoir of water-based liquid ink. The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits it on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action...
s could not do. Loud's pen had a small rotating steel ball, held in place by a socket. Although it could be used to mark rough surfaces such as leather, as Loud intended, it proved to be too coarse for letter writing and was not commercially exploited.
In the period between 1904 and 1946, particularly alternatives or improvements to the fountain pen were invented.
Slavoljub Eduard PenkalaSlavoljub Eduard Penkala was a naturalized Croatian engineer and inventor of Polish-Jewish ethnicity.Eduard Penkala was born in Liptovský Mikuláš , to Franjo Penkala, who was of Polish Jew heritage, and Maria Penkala , who was of Dutch heritage...
invented a solid-ink fountain pen in 1907, a German inventor named Baum took out a ballpoint patent in 1910, and yet another ballpoint pen device was patented by Van Vechten Riesburg in 1916. In these inventions, the ink was placed in a thin tube whose end was blocked by a tiny ball, held so that it could not slip into the tube or fall out of the pen. The ink clung to the ball, which spun as the pen was drawn across the paper. These proto-ballpoints did not deliver the ink evenly. If the ball socket were too tight, the ink did not reach the paper. If it were too loose, ink flowed past the tip, leaking or making smears. Many inventors tried to fix these problems, but without commercial success.
László BíróLászló József Bíró was the inventor of the modern ballpoint pen.Bíró was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1899. He presented the first production of the ball pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931...
, a Hungarian newspaper editor, was frustrated by the amount of time that he wasted in filling up fountain pens and cleaning up smudged pages, and the sharp tip of his fountain pen often tore the paper. Bíró had noticed that inks 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. Since, when tried, this viscous ink would not flow into a regular fountain pen nib, Bíró, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to work on designing new types of pens. Bíró fitted this pen with a tiny
ballA ball is a round, usually spherical but sometimes ovoid, object with various uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used for simpler activities, such as catch, marbles and juggling...
in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. Bíró filed a British patent on 15 June 1938.
Earlier pens leaked or clogged because of incorrect viscosity of the ink, and depended on gravity to deliver the ink to the ball. Depending on gravity caused difficulties with the flow and required that the pen be held nearly vertically. The original Biro pen used
capillary actionCapillary action, or capilarity, is the ability of a liquid to flow against gravity where liquid spontanously rise in a narrow space such as between the hair of a paint-brush, in a thin tube, or in porous material such as paper or in some non-porous material such as liquified carbon fiber, or in a...
and a piston that pressurised the ink column, solving the ink delivery flow problems. Later Biro pens had a spring that kept pressure on the piston, and still later the Biro pens used just gravity and capillary action.
In 1940
the Bíró brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne, fled Nazi Germany and moved to Argentina. On 10 June they filed another patent and formed
Bíró Pens of Argentina. The pen was sold in Argentina under the
Birome brand (portmanteau of
Bíró and
Meyne), which is how ballpoint pens are still known in that country. László was known in Argentina as Ladislao José Bíró. This new design was licensed by the British, who produced ball point pens for
RAFThe Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
aircrew as the
Biro; they found they worked much better than fountain pens at high altitude, the latter being prone to ink-leakage in the decreased
atmospheric pressureAtmospheric pressure is the force per unit area exerted into a surface by the weight of air above that surface in the atmosphere of Earth . In most circumstances atmospheric pressure is closely approximated by the hydrostatic pressure caused by the weight of air above the measurement point...
.
Eversharp, a maker of
mechanical pencilA mechanical pencil or a propelling pencil is a pencil with a replaceable and mechanically extendable solid pigment core called a lead . It is designed such that the lead can be extended as its point is worn away...
s, teamed up with
Eberhard FaberEberhard Faber GmbH was founded in 1922 in Neumarkt, near Nuremberg, Germany, as a pencil factory. It was taken over in 1978 by Staedtler, a stationery company with global presence...
in May 1945 to license the design for sales in the United States. At about the same time a U.S. businessman,
Milton ReynoldsMilton Reynolds , an American entrepreneur, was born Milton Reinsberg in Albert Lea, Minnesota. He is most famously known for the manufacture and introduction of the first ballpoint pen to be sold in the U.S. market in October 1945...
, saw a Biro pen in a store in
Buenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
. He purchased several samples and returned to the U.S. to found the
Reynolds International Pen Company, producing the Biro design without license as the
Reynolds Rocket. He managed to beat Eversharp to market in late 1945; the first ballpoint pens went on sale at Gimbels department store in New York City on 29 October 1945 for US$9.75 each. This pen was widely known as
the rocket in the U.S. into the late 1950s.
Description
There are two basic types of ball point pens: disposable and refillable.
Disposable pens are chiefly made of plastic throughout and discarded when the ink is consumed;
refillable pens are metal and some plastic and tend to be much higher in price. The refill replaces the entire internal ink reservoir and ball point unit rather than actually refilling it with ink, as it takes special high-speed centrifugation to properly fill a ball point reservoir with the viscous ink. The simplest types of ball point pens have a cap to cover the tip when the pen is not in use, while others have a mechanism for retracting the tip. This mechanism is usually controlled by a button at the top and powered by a
springA spring is an elastic object used to store mechanical energy. Springs are usually made out of spring steel. Small springs can be wound from pre-hardened stock, while larger ones are made from annealed steel and hardened after fabrication...
within the pen body, but other possibilities include a pair of buttons, a
screwA screw is a mechanism that converts rotational motion to linear motion, and a torque to a linear force. It is one of the six classical simple machines. The most common form consists of a cylindrical shaft with helical grooves or ridges called threads around the outside...
, or a slide.
Rollerball penRollerball pens are pens which use ball point writing mechanisms with water-based liquid or gelled ink, as opposed to the oil-based viscous inks found in ballpoint pens...
s combine the ballpoint design with the use of liquid ink and flow systems from fountain pens;
Space PenThe Space Pen , marketed by Fisher Space Pen Company, is a pen that uses pressurized ink cartridges and is claimed to write in zero gravity, underwater, over wet and greasy paper, at any angle, and in very wide temperature range.The Fisher Space Pen was invented by American industrialist and pen...
s, developed by Fisher in the United States, combine a more than normally viscous ballpoint pen ink with a gas-pressured piston which forces the ink toward the point. This design allows the pen to write even upside down or in zero gravity environments. A
graphiteThe mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
pencilA pencil is a writing implement or art medium usually constructed of a narrow, solid pigment core inside a protective casing. The case prevents the core from breaking, and also from marking the user’s hand during use....
can also be used in this way but produces graphite dust, requires sharpening, and is erasable, making it undesirable or unsuitable for use in some situations.
Standards
The
International Organization for StandardizationThe International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...
has published standards for ball point and roller ball pens:
ISO 12756:1998: Drawing and writing instruments – Ball point pens – Vocabulary
ISO 12757-1:1998: Ball point pens and refills – Part 1: General use
ISO 12757-2:1998: Ball point pens and refills – Part 2: Documentary use (DOC)
ISO 14145-1:1998: Roller ball pens and refills – Part 1: General use
ISO 14145-2:1998: Roller ball pens and refills – Part 2: Documentary use (DOC)
In everyday life
Ballpoint pens are ubiquitous in modern culture. While other forms of pen are available, ballpoint pens are certainly the most common and almost every
householdThe household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family"....
is likely to have several. The fact that they are cheaply available and convenient to use means they are often to be found on desks and also in pockets, handbags, purses, bags and in
carsAn automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
— almost anywhere where one could conceivably need to use a pen. Ballpoint pens are often provided free by businesses as a form of advertising — printed with a company's name; a ballpoint pen is a relatively low cost advertisement that is highly effective (customers will use, and therefore see, a pen daily). Businesses and charities may also include ballpoint pens in
direct mailAdvertising mail, also known as direct mail, junk mail, or admail, is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail. The delivery of advertising mail forms a large and growing service for many postal services, and direct-mail marketing forms a significant portion of the direct...
mailings in order to increase a customer's interest in the mailing.
Some people also create art on themselves with the pens; this is sometimes known as a ballpoint tattoo. Because of this and of the widespread use of ballpoints by schoolchildren, all ballpoint ink formulas are non-toxic, and the manufacturing and content of the ink is regulated in most countries.
As art medium
In recent years, the ballpoint pen has become a popular medium for professional and amateur artists. The instrument offers immediate results with little or no preparation required, along with portability and relative low price. Point size and ink characteristics such as lightfastness and opacity are considerations in choosing a make and model of pen.
Characteristics
Compared to
rollerballRollerball pens are pens which use ball point writing mechanisms with water-based liquid or gelled ink, as opposed to the oil-based viscous inks found in ballpoint pens...
and
fountainA fountain pen is a nib pen that, unlike its predecessor the dip pen, contains an internal reservoir of water-based liquid ink. The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits it on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action...
pens, ballpoints require more pressure to write. Ballpoints lack the free flowing supply of ink that other types have, requiring the writer to apply more pressure to the page. As a result, the ballpoint pens are less likely to leak. Their robustness makes them suitable where a firm press is required, namely for
carbon copyCarbon copying, abbreviated cc or c.c., is the technique of using carbon paper to produce one or more copies simultaneously during the creation of paper documents...
-type forms where a layer of carbon paper transfers the writing, but not the ink, to subsequent copies. In such use other types of pens may over time get damaged beyond usability.
They have difficulty writing on surfaces with low
frictionFriction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and/or material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction:...
(such as plastics, shiny surfaces, and wet or oily surfaces). Because of the pen's reliance on gravity to coat the ball with ink, most ballpoint pens cannot be used to write upside down. However,
certain ballpoint pensThe Space Pen , marketed by Fisher Space Pen Company, is a pen that uses pressurized ink cartridges and is claimed to write in zero gravity, underwater, over wet and greasy paper, at any angle, and in very wide temperature range.The Fisher Space Pen was invented by American industrialist and pen...
that do work upside-down have been invented.
External links
- A history of the ballpoint pen.
- Did Biros really revolutionise writing? - BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
- 24 October 2006