When Were Ballpoint Pens Invented?

When were ballpoint pens invented?  A patent on a roller-ball-tip marking pen was issued in 1888.  John Loud was a leather tanner who invented the ballpoint pen using a reservoir and roller ball.  This handy pen had several improvements over the years.

So, when was the invention of ballpoint pens?

• In 1888, the American John Loud invented the ballpoint pen by taking a reservoir of ink and a roller ball that applied thick ink to leather hides. 
• Pens of that time would not write on leather. 
• His pen was never made over the next 30 years
• Patents were issued for 350 inventions of similar ballpoint pens. 

None of these pens were produced because of problems with the ink. If it was too thin, it would leak and if it was too thick, it would clog.  A pen might do both of these things depending on the temperature.

A Better Ballpoint in Argentina

Let’s fast forward about 50 years to the invention of a better ballpoint pen made by Hungarian brothers named Ladislas and Georg Biro in 1935. 

• Ladislas was currently working as an editor of a newspaper and hated wasting time filling the fountain pens and cleaning up smudges. 
• Another problem was the tip of the pen would often tear the paper.  He got together with his brother Georg, who was a chemist, and worked to create a workable ballpoint pen. 
• One day, they met a man at the seashore who turned out to be the president of Argentina. They showed him a prototype of their pen and he encouraged them to set up a factory in Argentina. 
• A few years after World War II broke out they fled to Argentina and stopped in Paris on the way to register a patent on the pen.   

By 1943, pens were being manufactured but did not perform well, because the ink had to use gravity to roll out of the pen, so the user had to hold the pen almost vertically.  Even then, it still sometimes left globs of ink on the paper.  So the Biro brothers went back to work on improving the pen and a year later, sales increased for the pen.  It was not a huge success and the brothers ran out of money.  

Ballpoint Pen History in America 

American pilots liked the pens because they wrote at high altitudes, so the State Department asked for bids from several companies to make a similar pen for them. 

• The Eberhard Faber Company bought the rights from the Biro brothers for $500,000 and later sold the rights to the Eversharp Company.  Neither company put the pen on the market because it still did not work well.           

• Next in line was Milton Reynolds, who had seen the ballpoint pen in Argentina on vacation.  Because many of the ballpoint pens patents had expired, he copied Biros’ design and made a deal with Gimbels Department Store to sell his pens.

• Because of a full page ad Gimbels put in the New York Times, 5000 people showed up at the entrance of Gimbles to buy a pen and the entire stock of 10,000 sold out in one day.  Needless to say, Mr. Reynolds made a lot of money from the ballpoint pen.

• Several companies made ballpoint pens after that, but sales dropped off overall because there were still problems with them.  Someone needed to invent a pen that wrote smoothly, didn’t leak, dried quickly, and didn’t fade.  

• Finally two men, Patrick J. Frawley Jr. and Fran Seech, developed a pen that had a retractable ballpoint tip that did not leak and that worked well.  They called the pen Papermate and it was a huge success.

One other person wanted to improve the ballpoint pen and make it more practical.  His name was Marcel Bich and in 1952, he introduced the ballpoint Bic, which did not leak, wrote smoothly, and most of all, was inexpensive.  The rest, they say, is history.