Without Looking At History, We Will Not Realize The Magnitude Of The Discovery Of The Small Ball At The Tip Of The Pen

Photo illustration (Aaron Burden / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - In this era of super-sophisticated technology, the technology of writing a ballpoint pen might look ordinary. In fact, the pen is one of the important discoveries. For example, for air force military affairs.

Quoting Wired, an inventor from the United States (US), Lewis Waterman had invented a portable pen in 1884. Thanks to this, people no longer need to carry an inkpot anywhere to be able to write anywhere and anytime. However, Waterman's discovery had many drawbacks: the ink was still difficult to dry.

Four years later, the American banker, John L.Loud, perfected Waterman's invention again. He put a small ball on the tip of the pen to smear the ink which is sticky and of course dries quickly. However, it seems that Loud has not thought of a broader use, his invention only focuses on industrial uses.

His pen is only suitable for scratches on leather and fabric. Meanwhile, for writing on paper, the ink is too sticky, rough and uncomfortable to use. Loud patented his invention in 1888.

Seeing the importance of using an effective pen for paper, the Hungarian brothers Laszlo Biro and Georg Biro re-perfected the pen technology. Laszlo Biro, a journalist, came up with the idea to take advantage of newspaper ink which dries quickly.

He was assisted by his brother Georg, a chemist, in technical matters. They refined the little balls which were later attached to the nib. The balls have two functions, the first is to evenly distribute the ink from the cartridge - the pen filling - to the paper for writing. Then the second can stem the ink so that it is durable in the cartridge.

This discovery led to rapid advances for even smoother writing. Unfortunately, this discovery still cannot be disseminated. Because the situation in their country worsened due to World War II. They had fled to Paris, then to Madrid until finally to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was there that the Brothers Bureau patented its invention today, June 10, 77 years ago or 1943.

Important discovery

Apart from applying for patents, they are also seeking financial support to spread their inventions. Incidentally they have a colleague who is a British accountant named Harry Martin. Martin saw that this new design ballpoint pen could solve the problems facing the British Royal Air Force.

The reason is, the conventional pens they have used so far are not suitable for writing airplane logs. Because the conventional pen often leaked, it was too sensitive to changes in atmospheric pressure so that it was not obvious when writing vertically or writing overhead.

Martin eventually flew to Washington and London, convincing the US Air Force and RAF (UK) to adopt the new technology. When the Allies won the war, the ballpoint pen also benefited.

So that in 1945 the ballpoint pens started their mass production. In the US, the Reynolds Pen sells for 12.50 US dollars or about 150 US dollars in 2011 exchange rates.

That's when people started to enjoy the latest writing technology. On the first day alone, sales of ballpoint pens reached 8,000. The discoveries are still functional to this day.