From aviators to schoolchildren: how were ballpoint pens born?

In the program "Historically yours" on Europe 1, the journalist David Castello-Lopes returned to the origin of the ballpoint pen.

This object was first invented by a Hungarian, before being taken over by the French Marcel Bich in the 1950s and 190s, who gave it its name.

 Journalist David Castello-Lopes, in the program Historically yours on Europe 1, looks back every day on the origins of a concept.

This Thursday, he is interested in an object that

we have all used, worn, and sometimes even kept:

 the ballpoint pen.

By bouncing on a text by Amélie Nothomb, guest of the program of Stéphane Bern and Matthieu Noël, the chronicler returns to this invention which comes to us from the 20th century, and of a Frenchman named ... Marcel Bich.

"A funeral for old soldiers"

"I saw a little video Amélie Nothomb, taken from an interview where you explain your relationship to ballpoint pens. And more exactly to disposable ballpoint pens. You say that we consider that they are all the same but that in fact they're different. There are some who have hemorrhages, for example. There are those who stop walking and then walk again and then above all there are those who last incredibly long. And those, whom you call the old soldiers. , well you reserve special honors for them:

'There are the tireless, the old soldiers.

I love them so much that when I throw them away I give them the funeral of old soldiers.

That is to say that I give them military funerals and that I look at them at the bottom of the trash while telling them you you fought well. '

>> Find all the shows of Matthieu Noël and Stéphane Bern in replay and podcast here

And I want to tell you that apart from the fact that you are a great writer and I am not, well we are the same.

I remember when I was ten years old I was given a tribal patterned ballpoint pen like it was all the rage in the 1990s. And I loved it with all my might.

I was using it so much that it ended up getting broken all over the place.

So I stopped using it.

But one day, maybe a year later, I went to America and I was like 'You know what, I'm going to take him, because he deserves it'.

Yes, maybe the Pelikan I bought last week is more reliable and shinier, but it has life ahead of it.

While this patched up old man needs this last trip.

And I found myself righteous, good, and virtuous.

I was also very proud to see the ink level decrease in my pens, because that meant that I wrote a lot, like a grown-up.

Like a true CM2 and not like those zero CPs whose ink levels always remained at the same level because they didn't write a lot and they were so zero.

Reinvented by Marcel Bich

So in France, we call it a ballpoint pen.

But there are plenty of countries in the world where it is called a biro.

Why ?

Because the man who invented the modern ballpoint pen was called Laszlo Biro.

Like almost 100% of the people called Laszlo, he was Hungarian.

And what he was trying to do in the beginning was to make a pen whose ink could dry faster than what you put in fountain pens.

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So he tried to put more viscous ink in a fountain pen, but the ink did not flow.

So he adapted the ballpoint pen system that had existed but barely since 1888, perfected it and succeeded in making a pen that worked pretty much correctly.

He then marketed his invention in the United States where it was used in particular by aviators during the Second World War. 

But it was not quite ready and above all, it was drooling a lot.

Then there is a French gentleman, named Marcel Bich, who bought Biro's patent.

He came up with a both much better and much cheaper version of Laszlo's pen, and he gave it his name by removing the H.

Really marketed in 1950

In 1950, the world's first bic Crystal was therefore marketed.

It has nevertheless sold more than 100 billion since.

Partly because I think it's one of those perfect designs.

The transparent side, which allows you to see the lowering ink level.

The hexagonal side, which not only makes it easy to handle but also doesn't roll when placed on a table. 

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And personally, I add that the little blue cap that closes the tube at the end is delicious to eat.

Even if there is always that sad moment when, by dint of being chewed, the tip of the pen breaks into several small pieces and we end up with slobbering stalactites that fall on its sheet and we have a bad time.

We are ashamed. 

I would like to say a word all the same about the retractable bic, which dates from 1956. And which nevertheless has qualities that the Bic Crystal does not have, in particular that of being able to be armed and disarmed with one hand which is practical in particular for policemen and waiters. But small inconvenience, a large part of the ink tank is not visible. So we have to wait and wait and wait to see the ink level move. But I have to say that even today, when I finally see her appear, I'm still a little proud. "