László Biró He was the inventor of the ballpoint pen, he was born in Budapest on September 29 th.

He got annoyed with fountain pens because they didn’t work well. The ink dried quickly in paper but sometimes there were smudges and it got dirty.

The ballpoint pen Working with his brother György, a chemist, he fitted a ball in the tip of a pen. The ball was free to turn. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated and left the ink.

The mechanism

His brother helped to develop a proper ink. Biró patented his pen in 1938 in Paris. A German manufacturer bought it in 1939.

In 1939 the family emigrated from Hungary to Paris and then to Argentina. His ballpoint pen was successful, and established Biró Pens of Argentina. In Argentina they call it “Birome”.

Balls that work well were made by a Swedish company. In France they were called “Bic” (Biró Crayon) The British Royal Air Force used it during the war, because they needed pens that would not leak ink in high altitudes.

World-wide success The Biró pen won a World-Wide reputation. In English speaking countries people call the ball pen biro. September 29 th Biro’s birthday is celebrated as Argentine inventor’s day. Biro died in November 29 th 1985 in Buenos Aires.

A SHORT HISTORY OF WRITING AND ITS INSTRUMENTS Not one of these writers was able to enjoy a pen with its own ink: Aristophanes (ca. 446 – ca. 386) William Shakespeare (26th April 1564 – 23rd April 1616) Charles Dickens (7th February 1812 – 9th June 1870)

We don’t know if the literary quality of these writers would have improved by using a pen. We are going to see how the pen developed: The history of writing instruments is the history of civilization itself.

Human beings have always needed writing to record thoughts and feelings. Or also to control reality, express their identity or write the food list for the supermarket.

The cave man scratched pictures with a pointed stone on the walls. The cave drawings represented events in daily life. Also they had religious meanings. The first writing instrument

The discovery of CLAY made portable records possible. Merchants used clay tokens to record the materials sold or shipped. That was about 8500 B.C.

The PICTOGRAPHS or PICTOGRAMS were pictures of the real world. Pictograms have been found in Egypt, Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C. and China around 1500 B.C. The alphabet replaced pictographs between 1700 and 1500 B.C. Nowadays the equivalent of a pictograph would be a road sign.

Other ways of writing were: 1) The cuneiform : meaning wedge- shaped. It developed around the 4th millennium B.C. in cultures such Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians

2) The Egyptian Hieroglyphic: Hieroglyphic is a Greek word meaning “sacred carving”. It was used mainly in temples and tombs.

The Rosseta Stone, discovered by Napoleon, is in the British Museum, and has hieroglyphic symbols and Greek letters.

3) The Logographic writing system: They use symbols that represent words. They are used in China and Japan. Students need to learn about 2000 characters.

THE ALPHABETIC WRITING The alphabetic writing is the most economic and adaptable system. You only need a small number of units. Most alphabets contain between 20 and 30 symbols. Usually one letter refers to one sound. The earliest alphabet was the Semitic, developed around 1700 BC in Palestine and Syria.

The Hebrew, Arabic and Phoenician alphabets were based on this model. Around 1000 B.C, Phoenician was used as a model for Greek alphabet. Arabic Hebrew Cyrillic

NEW ALPHABETS FROM OLD: Around 800 BC Greek was the model for Etruscan. The letters of the Roman alphabet came from Etruscan. Roman alphabet was the model for all the western alphabets. Roman Greek

WRITING WITH PEN AND PAPER The earliest means of writing that was similar to pen and paper was developed by Greeks. They used a stylus, made of metal, bone or ivory to place marks on wax tablets. The Chinese invented and perfected the “Indian Ink”.

The ink was a mixture of soot from pine smoke and lamp oil mixed with the gelatine of donkey skin and musk. Other cultures developed ink using natural dyes and colours from berries, plants and minerals.

THE INTRODUCTION OF PAPER The early Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and Hebrews used papyrus and parchment paper. The Romans created a pen from a bamboo

WOOD PAPER

Paper made of wood, was invented in China in 105 A.D. It was brought to Spain by the Arabs in 711 A.D. Paper was not used in Europe until paper mills were built in the 14th century.

THE QUILL PEN

The quill pen is the writing instrument that dominated for the longest period of history. It was made from a bird feather. The strongest were taken from living birds in the spring. The left wing feathers were prefered for the right-handed writer.

Goose feathers were common. Also from swans, crows, eagles, owls, hawks and turkeys.

Plant-fiber paper became the primary medium for writing after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Gutenberg used replaceable wooden or metal letters.

Simpler kinds of printing had been used in China. When writers had better ink and paper, the development of the modern fountain pen was ready.

Ball point pen VS Fountain pen

-Lewis Waterman patented the first practical fountain pen in The fountain pen's design came after a thousand years of using quill-pens. -The ink cartridge was introduced around 1950.

-It was disposable, pre-filled plastic or glass cartridge designed for clean and easy insertion. -They were an immediate success. -Fountain pens sell today as a classic writing instrument.

-But the introduction of the ballpoints, however, overshadowed the invention of the cartridge and was bad business for the fountain pen industry.

-Today, the popular modern version of Laszlo Biro's pen, the BIC Crystal, has a daily world wide sales figure of 14,000,000 pieces. -Biro is still the name used for the ballpoint pen in most of the world.