Ballpoint pen facts for kids
A ballpoint pen is a popular writing tool used by almost everyone today. In some places, like Britain, it's also called a "biro" (pronounced "BY-roe"), named after its inventor, László Bíró.
Inside a ballpoint pen, there's a long, thin tube filled with ink. When you write, a tiny, ball-shaped tip at the end of the pen rolls. This ball picks up ink from the tube and puts it onto the paper. The ink dries very quickly, so it usually doesn't smudge.
Before ballpoint pens, people often wrote with pens that had to be dipped into ink, or with fountain pens that needed to be refilled. When ballpoint pens first came out, some people worried they would make handwriting look messy. Children in schools often had to keep using older ink pens. However, ballpoint pens got much better. They are now super easy to use, which is why they are so common today.
Did you know that Galileo Galilei was working on an idea for a pen like this in the early 1600s? The official invention of the ballpoint pen was registered by László Bíró in 1938.
There are two main kinds of ballpoint pens:
- Disposable pens are very cheap. They are mostly made of plastic. You throw them away once all the ink is gone.
- Refillable pens are usually better quality and cost more. With these, you can replace the part that holds the ink and has the ball tip. This makes them last longer.
The Bic Cristal is a very famous disposable ballpoint pen. Its simple design is so well-known that it's even part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York!
Contents
History of Ballpoint Pens
The idea of using a small ball to put ink on paper for writing has been around since the late 1800s. These early designs had ink in a thin tube, with a tiny ball at the end. The ball was held in a way that it couldn't fall out or slip back into the tube.
The very first patent for a ballpoint pen was given on October 30, 1888, to John J. Loud. He wanted to create a pen that could write on rough surfaces like wood or thick wrapping paper, which regular fountain pens couldn't do. Loud's pen had a small, spinning steel ball. While it worked for marking rough surfaces, it wasn't good for writing letters.
László Bíró, a newspaper editor from Hungary, was tired of constantly refilling his fountain pens and cleaning up smudged pages. He noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried very quickly and didn't smudge. He decided to try making a pen that used this kind of ink. Bíró asked his brother György, who was a chemist, to help him create a thick ink that would work with new ballpoint designs.
Bíró filed a patent for his invention in Britain on June 15, 1938. In 1941, the Bíró brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne, moved to Argentina. There, they started a company called Bíró Pens of Argentina and filed a new patent in 1943.
Ballpoint Pens Become Popular
After World War II, many companies wanted to make their own ballpoint pens. In Argentina, the Birome ballpoint pen had some success. In 1945, the Eversharp Company, which made mechanical pencils, teamed up with Eberhard Faber Co. They bought the rights from Birome to sell the pens in the United States.
Paper Mate pens became one of the new ballpoint brands in the 1950s. They bought the rights to sell their pens in Canada. People were worried about how reliable the ink was, so Paper Mate created new ink formulas. They advertised them as "banker-approved" to show they were trustworthy.
In 1954, Parker Pens released their first ballpoint pen, called The Jotter. It had new features and technology, including special ball-bearings made of tungsten-carbide. In less than a year, Parker sold millions of these pens. In the 1960s, the Eversharp Co. sold its pen business to Parker and eventually closed down.
Marcel Bich also brought a ballpoint pen to the American market in the 1950s. His pens were based on Bíró's designs from Argentina. Bich shortened his name to Bic in 1953, and Bic pens are now known all over the world. Bic pens struggled at first until they launched their famous advertising campaign in the 1960s: "Writes The First Time, Every Time!" All this competition made the price of ballpoint pens drop a lot.
Different Types of Ballpoint Pens
Ballpoint pens come in both disposable and refillable styles. With refillable pens, you can replace the whole inside part that holds the ink and the ballpoint. These pens are often fancier or made from better materials. The simplest ballpoint pens are disposable. They either have a cap to cover the tip or a way to pull the tip back inside the pen when you're not using it. This usually works with a spring or a screw.
Rollerball pens use the same ballpoint idea, but they have water-based inks instead of oil-based inks.
Most ballpoint pens need gravity to make the ink flow to the ball. This means you usually can't write upside-down with them. However, Fisher pens in the United States developed a special pen called the "Fisher Space Pen". Space Pens use a thicker ink and have a pressurized ink tank that pushes the ink to the tip. Unlike regular ballpoints, the back of a Space Pen's ink tank is sealed. This stops the ink from drying out or leaking. It also lets the pen write upside-down, in zero-gravity (like in space!), and even underwater. Astronauts have used these pens in outer space.
The Paper Mate pen company was the first to create ballpoint pens with "erasable ink."
The inexpensive, disposable Bic Cristal (often just called a Bic pen or Biro) is said to be the most widely sold pen in the world.
Businesses sometimes give away ballpoint pens for free as a way to advertise. They print their company's name on the pen. It's a cheap way to advertise, and it works well because customers use the pen every day and see the company's name.
Ballpoint Pens as Art
Ballpoint pens are also used by professional artists and people who just like to doodle. Artists like them because they are cheap, easy to find, and simple to carry around. This makes them a handy and different art supply. Some artists use them with other materials, while others use only ballpoint pens for their artwork.
Artists can create amazing effects that you might not expect from a ballpoint pen. They use traditional pen-and-ink techniques like stippling (making dots) and cross-hatching (making crisscross lines). These techniques help create shading or make things look three-dimensional. Ballpoint pens are great for artists who need very precise lines, which are harder to make with a brush. When done carefully, ballpoint pen art can look like airbrushed paintings or even photographs! This often surprises people, a reaction artist Lennie Mace calls the Wow Factor.
Famous artists from the 20th century, like Andy Warhol, used ballpoint pens in some of their work. Ballpoint pen art is still popular today. Many contemporary artists are known for their unique use of ballpoint pens, showing off their skill, imagination, and new ideas. For example, Korean-American artist Il Lee has been making large, abstract artworks using only ballpoint pens since the late 1970s. Since the 1980s, Lennie Mace has created imaginative ballpoint-only artwork on unusual surfaces like wood and denim.
How Ballpoint Pens Are Made
Even though different brands have different designs, all ballpoint pens have the same basic parts. These include the ball point itself, which spins freely and puts ink on the paper. There's also a socket that holds the ball in place, and an ink reservoir that supplies ink to the ball. In modern disposable pens, the ink is in narrow plastic tubes. Gravity helps the ink move down to the ball. The tiny ball bearings are made from materials like brass, steel, or tungsten carbide, and they sit in a brass socket.
You can think of how these parts work like the ball in a roll-on deodorant. It's the same idea, just on a bigger scale! The ball point puts ink on the paper, but it also acts like a "buffer" between the ink inside the pen and the air outside. This stops the quick-drying ink from drying out inside the pen. Most modern ballpoint pens are said to last about two years on a shelf.
The common ballpoint pen is made through mass production. This means different parts are made separately on assembly lines and then put together.
Guinness World Record
The world's largest working ballpoint pen was created by Acharya Makunuri Srinivasa in India. This giant pen is 5.5 meters (18 feet, 0.53 inches) long and weighs 37.23 kilograms (82.08 pounds, 1.24 ounces)!
Images for kids
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Magnified tip of a ballpoint pen
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Movement of the ball in a ballpoint pen
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2018 Parker Jotters are similar to the version that first came out in 1954
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Twist action ballpoint pen with large capacity G2 type refill
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Commonly used ballpoint refill types (diameter and length given in millimeters)
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Designer created ballpoint pen with case made of wood showing induced fungal decay
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See also
In Spanish: Bolígrafo para niños
