It was the Biro brothers who invented the ball-point pen in the late 1930s which changed writing forever
The ball-point pen or ball pen, as we know it today, was invented by Hungarian journalist and painter Laszlo Biro.
Biro hated the way fountain pens blotted and smudged on the paper. Once, when he was visiting a newspaper printing press, he saw them using quick-drying ink and rollers. The first thing he did was use the newspaper ink inside a fountain pen but found that the ink was too thick and slow to make it to the nib of the pen.
So he approached his brother, Gyorgy Biro, who was a chemist. Together, they created a rolling ball mechanism for the tip of the pen. This ball picked up ink from a cartridge as it turned in its socket and then rolled again to deposit it on paper. They also created just the right consistency of ink for this kind of nib. They patented their invention in 1938 and called the pen Biro. In some countries, the pens are still known by this name.
Unfortunately, the advent of World War II forced the Biro brothers to flee Hungary because they were Jews. They shifted to Argentina where they began selling their pen commercially under the brand name 'Eterpen'. That's how the ball-point pen was born.
Picture Credit : Google
