Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro was well aware of the problems with normal pens. Biro believed that the idea of a pen using a quick-drying ink instead of India ink came to him while visiting a newspaper. The newspaper’s ink left the paper dry and smudge-free almost immediately. Biro vowed to use a similar ink in a new type of writing instrument. To avoid clogging his pen up with thick ink, he proposed a tiny metal ball that rotated at the end of a tube of this quick drying ink. The ball would have two functions:
- It would act as a cap to keep the ink from drying.
- It would let ink flow out of the pen at a controlled rate.
In June 1943, Biro and his brother Georg, a chemist, took out a new patent with the European Patent Office and made the first commercial models, Biro pens. Later, the British government bought the rights to the patented pens so that the pens could be used by Royal Air Force crews. In addition to being sturdier than conventional fountain pens, ballpoint pens wrote at high altitudes with reduced pressure (conventional fountain pens flooded at high altitudes). Their successful performance for the Royal Air Force brought the Biro pen into the limelight, and during World War II the ballpoint pen was widely used by the military because of its toughness and ability to survive the battle environment.
In the United States, the first successful, commercially produced ballpoint pen to replace the then-common fountain pen was introduced by Milton Reynolds in 1945. It used a tiny ball that rolled heavy, gelatin-consistency ink onto the paper. The Reynolds Pen was a primitive writing instrument marketed as “The first pen to write underwater.” Reynolds sold 10,000 of his pens when they were first introduced. These first publicly sold pens were very expensive ($10 each), primarily because of the new technology.
In 1945, the first inexpensive ballpoint pens were manufactured when Frenchman Marcel Bich developed the industrial process for making the pens that lowered the unit cost dramatically. In 1949, Bich introduced his pens in Europe. He called the pens “BIC,” a shortened, easy-to-remember version of his name. Ten years later, BIC first sold its pens on the American market.
Consumers were reluctant to buy the BIC pens at first, as so many pens had been introduced in the U.S. market by other manufacturers. To counter this hesitancy, the BIC company created an exciting national television campaign to tell consumers that this ballpoint pen “Writes First Time, Every Time!,” and sold it for only 29 cents. BIC also launched television ads that depicted its pens being fired from a rifle, strapped to an ice skate, and even mounted on a jackhammer. Within a year, competition forced prices down to less than 10 cents each. Today, the BIC company manufactures millions of ballpoint pens a day !!!
Source : Russell-Ausley, Melissa. “How Ballpoint Pens Work.” 01 April 2000. HowStuffWorks.com 05 July 2009
A pen is a tool used for writing or drawing with a colored fluid, such as ink. A ballpoint pen is a pen that uses a small rotating ball made of brass, steel or tungsten carbide to disperse ink as you write. It is very different than its pen predecessors — the reed pen, quill pen, metal nib pen, and fountain pen .
All of the pens that preceded the ballpoint used a watery, dark India ink that fed through the pen using capillary action. The problems with this technology are well-known. For example:
- The ink can flow unevenly.
- The ink is slow to dry. The ink is exposed to the air while it is flowing through the pen, so it cannot dry quickly or it would clog the pen.
- When it does accidentally dry in the pen, the ink gums the whole thing up and requires meticulous cleaning.
When you add to this list the fact that fountain pens tend to flood when you fly on an airplane with them, you can see that all pens up until World War II presented some significant problems for their users — the world awaited a better solution.
Source : Russell-Ausley, Melissa. “How Ballpoint Pens Work.” 01 April 2000. HowStuffWorks.com 05 July 2009
Father’s Day is a day honoring fathers, celebrated on the third Sunday of June in 52 of the world’s countries and on other days elsewhere. It complements Mother’s Day, the celebration honoring mothers.
Father’s Day is a day of commemoration and celebration of Dad. It is a day to not only honor your father, but all men who have acted as a father figure in your life – whether as Stepfathers, Uncles, Grandfathers, or “Big Brothers.”
The idea for creating a day for children to honor their fathers began in Spokane, Washington. A woman by the name of Sonora Smart Dodd thought of the idea for Father’s Day while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909.
Having been raised by her father, William Jackson Smart, after her mother died, Sonora wanted her father to know how special he was to her. It was her father that made all the parental sacrifices and was, in the eyes of his daughter, a courageous, selfless, and loving man. Sonora’s father was born in June, so she chose to hold the first Father’s Day celebration in Spokane, Washington on the 19th of June, 1910.
In 1926, a National Father’s Day Committee was formed in New York City. Father’s Day was recognized by a Joint Resolution of Congress in 1956. In 1972, President Richard Nixon established a permanent national observance of Father’s Day to be held on the third Sunday of June. So Father’s Day was born in memory and gratitude by a daughter who thought that her father and all good fathers should be honored with a special day just like we honor our mothers on Mother’s Day.
montblanc-max-von-oppenheim-limited-edition
Look for more pens and writing instruments at www.KSGILLS.com
M-O-T-H-E-R
“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears she shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold;
“E” is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
“R” means right, and right she’ll always be,
Put them all together, they spell “MOTHER”,
A word that means the world to me.
–Howard Johnson (c. 1915)
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A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.
– Washington Irving (1783-1859)
KUALA LUMPUR: K.S. Gill had always dreamt about doing something special for his late good friend, Tunku Abdul Rahman, in conjunction with the nation’s Merdeka celebration.
It was no wonder that the “pen doctor”, as he is popularly known, came up with the idea of producing “Merdeka pens” to celebrate the nation’s 50th birthday.
Gill, founder of the country’s pioneer pen specialist store, K.S. Gill (KL) Sdn Bhd, which opened in 1941, became friends with Tunku Abdul Rahman as both were then members of the Selangor Club.
Its present managing director M. Ridzuan Gill said his 93-year-old father’s dream was to do something special for the celebration, so he thought about producing handmade American “Statesman” pens with the Jalur Gemilang design on them.
Collector’s item: Ridzuan showing the limited edition Statesman pens produced for the 50th Merdeka celebration.
Ridzuan, 49, said the pens, which cost RM1,957 each – to mark the year the nation gained independence – would be presented to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his deputy Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak soon.
There are 188 of these limited edition pens which work both as a fountain and rollerball pen.
“The pen is not made for profit purposes. It is to represent a family legacy of patriotism to Malaysia and even if we lose out, it’s a small price to pay for so much that we have gained from the country,” Ridzuan said in an interview at the store in Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman here yesterday.
He said different materials were used to make the pen. The nib is a German two-tone broad Iridium, with rich 22K gold hand-cast engraved insets on the cap, barrel and accent band surrounded by brilliant Rhodium plating to enhance the four different types of wood used in the depiction of the Malaysian flag.
Ridzuan said dyed American maple is used for the red stripes, natural American holly for the white stripes, dyed American curly poplar for the blue canton and natural Brazilian satinwood for the yellow crescent and star.
“It takes four days to make one pen, and this will be the first and last time that we will make such pens,” he said, adding that 47 pieces had already been sold.
He said that since each pen was handmade, no two pens were exactly alike as the subtle differences of wood colour and grain enabled each pen to be unique.
The limited edition comes protected in a specially designed wooden box with a patriotic touch, a convertible rollerball section and refill, a black pen pouch and a bottle of ink.
The Star : Wednesday August 29, 2007