HISTORY:
• The modern ball point pen
was invented in 1938 by
the Argentine-Hungarian
journalist In the 1930s
Bíró was working as the
editor of a small
newspaper. Bíró 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
his pages.
CONTD…

Bíró had noticed that the type of ink 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.
CONTD…

Bíró fitted this pen with a tiny ball bearing 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.
CONTD…

It has been argued that a design by Galileo Galilei
(during the 17th century), was that of a ballpoint pen. A
patent dated 1888 on the same basic idea was unused
and expired. Slavoljub Eduard Penkala had invented a
solid-ink fountain pen in 1907. These earlier pens
leaked or clogged due to improper viscosity of the ink
and depended on gravity to deliver the ink to the ball.
CONTD…

Depending on gravity caused difficulties with the flow
and required that the pen be held nearly vertically. The
Biro pen used capillary action for ink delivery, solving
the flow problems.
CONTD…

In 1944 the Bíró brothers moved to Argentina and on
June 10, filed another patent, and formed Bíró Pens of
Argentina. The pen was sold in Argentina under the
Birome brand, which is how ballpoint pens are still
known in Argentina. Laszlo was known in Argentina as
Lisandro José Bíró. This new design was licensed by
the British, who produced ball point pens for RAF
aircrew, who found they worked much better than
fountain pens at high altitude.
CONTD…

Eversharp, a maker of mechanical pencils teamed up
with Eberhard-Faber in May 1945 to license the design
for sales in the United States. At about the same time a
U.S. businessman saw a Biro pen in a store in Buenos
Aires. 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.
CONTD…

Eversharp, a maker of mechanical pencils teamed up
with Eberhard-Faber in May 1945 to license the design
for sales in the United States. At about the same time a
U.S. businessman saw a Biro pen in a store in Buenos
Aires. 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.
CONTD…

Similar pens went on sale before the end of the year in
England, and by the next year in most of Europe.
Cheap disposable instruments were produced by the
BIC Corporation with "Bic" as the tradename; as with
'Hoover' and 'Xerox', the tradename has subsequently
passed into general use. With BIC's expanding product
range, the original Bic pen design is now termed the
Bic Cristal.
CONTD…

Since 1990, Biro's birthday (the 29th of September) is
Inventor's Day in Argentina.
Description

The tip of a common
disposable ballpoint
pen. The ball, with
dark ink on it, can
be seen.
CONTD…


There are two basic types of ball point pen:
disposable and refillable.
Disposable pens are chiefly made of plastic
throughout and discarded when the ink is
consumed; refillable pens are metal or plastic
and tend to be higher in quality and price. The
refill tends to replace the entire internal ink
reservoir and ball point unit rather than actually
refilling it with ink.
CONTD…


The simplest types of ball point pens have a fat cap to
cover the tip when the pen is not in use, while others
have a mechanism for retracting the tip. This is usually
controlled by a button at the bottom and powered by a
spring within the pen apparatus, but other possibilities
include a pair of buttons, a screw, or a slide.
Rollerball pens, which combine the ballpoint design
with the use of liquid ink and flow systems from
fountain pens;
CONTD…

After the invention of the ballpoint pen, creators
of the traditional fountain pen attempted to sue,
claiming that by inventing the pen, they had
breached the copyright laws protecting the
pen. The case was released from court after 1
month.
CONTD…

Ballpoint pens are ubiquitous in modern
culture. While other forms of pen are available,
ballpoint pens are certainly the most common
and almost every household is likely to have
several dozen.
CONTD…

. The fact that they are so cheaply available
(costing from just a few cents/pence to
produce) and so convenient to use means they
are often to be found on desks and also in
pockets, handbags, purses, bags and in cars—
almost anywhere where one could conceivably
need to use a pen.
CONTD…

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 on a daily basis).
CONTD…


Businesses and charities may also include
ballpoint pens in direct mail mailings in order to
increase a customer's interest in the mailing.
In recent years, the ballpoint pen has become
a popular art medium, as demonstrated by
such websites as biro-art.com.
CONTD…

Many people also create art on themselves
with the pens; this is sometimes known as a
ballpoint tattoo.
Grip and feel

Ballpoint pens have three characteristics that
distinguish them from rollerball systems. First,
the ink flow increases with pressure. A rollerball
will typically lay down its line without pressure.
CONTD…

Second, they write with the greatest ink flow
when perpendicular to the paper, but as the
angle is increased the line width gradually
decreases; at some angle, when the edge of
the ball socket brushes against the surface of
the paper, the line width is reduced to zero and
the pen ceases to write.
CONTD…

Third, a ballpoint pen's ink is typically not as
bright on paper as its liquid or gel ink
counterparts.
CONTD…

These characteristics have consequences for
the grip with which the pen is held. First, one
tends to bear down on a ballpoint to get a
stronger line, and this increases tension in the
hand. (One way of getting a stronger line,
comparable in intensity to a rollerball line, is to
use a broad line ballpoint, with a 1.2mm
diameter, or greater, ball size. Most ballpoints
have a thin or medium ball.)
CONTD…

Second, one has to hold the pen sufficiently
vertically for it to roll across the paper and not
to scratch. Most people nowadays are so
accustomed to writing nearly perpendicularly
that they do not realize that there are other
ways to hold a pen.
CONTD…

There are two kinds of pens that can write at
greater angles than ballpoint pens: fountain
pens and felt-tipped pens. Both of these types
of pen also write with less pressure and
therefore with less tension in the hand. and the
ball rolls the ink on the paper
CONTD…

A dip pen (also sometimes called a "nib pen")
usually consists of a metal nib with capillary
channels like those of fountain pen nibs,
mounted on a handle or holder, often made of
wood. Other materials can be used for the
holder, including bone, metal and plastic, while
some pens are made entirely of glass.
CONTD…

Most dip pens have no ink reservoir, however, and
must be repeatedly recharged with ink while drawing or
writing. (However, there are simple, tiny tubular
reservoirs that illustrators sometimes clip onto dip
pens; these allow drawing for several minutes without
recharging the nib.) Recharging can be done by
dipping into an inkwell; however, most illustrators and
cartoonists (who are the main current users of such
pens) are more likely to charge the pen with an
eyedropper, which gives them more control.
CONTD…

Thus, "dip pens" are not necessarily dipped! This may
be why many illustrators call them "nib pens."
CONTD…

The dip pen has certain advantages over a
fountain pen. It can use waterproof pigmented
(particle-and-binder-based) inks, such as socalled "India ink", drawing ink, or acrylic inks,
which would destroy a fountain pen by clogging
it up, as well as the traditional iron gall ink,
which can cause corrosion in fountain pens.
CONTD…

There are also a wide range of readily
exchangeable nibs available so different types
of lines and effects can be created. The nibs
and handles are far cheaper than most
fountain pens, and allow color changes much
more easily.
CONTD…

Dip pens were generally used prior to the
development of fountain pens, and are now
mainly used in illustration, calligraphy, comics,
and manga.
A Gel pen
Parts of a ballpoint pen
Ballpoint pen drawing
Close-up of black ballpoint pen
marks on paper.
NAME:-Bibhuprasad
mishra.
th
CLASS:-9
School:-Govt. Boys’