You may not realise this but the humble ballpoint pen, used by millions of people around the world every day, is less than eight decades old.

Invented as the Second World War was about to begin in 1938, the biro takes its name from its creator Ladislao José Biro.

Biro, also known as László József Bíró, was born on 29 September 1899 in Budapest in what was then Austria-Hungary.

He was a sometime journalist, painter and inventor who was frustrated with fountain pens blotting and smudging. He got the idea on a visit to a newspaper printing press, which used quick-drying ink and a roller.

"It got me thinking how this process could be simplified right down to the level of an ordinary pen," he later said.