1938: Ballpoint pen (equipment)
Today, you can find a large number of ballpoint pens in any office or grocery store, but before 1938, ballpoint pens were limited to concepts in patent documents.
The first ballpoint pen patent was issued in 1888, and the recipient was leather worker John Loud (John Loud), who was looking for a tool to write on leather. At that time, the fountain pen was the main writing tool. This pen was put into the nib to write, but it often scratched the paper and required an ink tube that needed to be refilled. In addition, the ink is difficult to dry.
The idea of a ballpoint pen is that it has a surrounding ink tube that can maintain stable writing, relying on the freely rotating steel ball on the pen tip to bring out the ink and transfer it to the paper. But for many years, chemists and inventors have not been able to find a way to make the ink rotate evenly, so that the pen tube is not blocked, oil leaks, and tailing.
By the mid-1930s, Hungarian newspaper editor Laszlo Biro finally found this way. He uses the same ink used in newspaper printing, so it can dry quickly, and uses a freely rotating steel ball in the pen tip. He applied for a patent for this pen in the United Kingdom in 1938, but this design did not enter the United States until 7 years later.
Author: Strongink Pen Kits