Before the advent of metal pens, the

Western world's writing instrument of

choice was the quill. Finding bird

feathers wasn't very hard. Ever since

600 AD, that's how most writing was done.

Once the Industrial Revolution got underway, improved metallurgy and mass production techniques resulted in the dip pen. It was essentially a metal nib mounted on a handle. It could barely hold more ink than a quill and its prac tical use was about the same.

T he first truly practical pens appeared at the end of the 19th century, they are what we call 'fountain pens' and the innovation behind them was that, they had a reservoir of ink inside. The first commercially successful fountain pens were built in 1884 by Lewis Waterman.

He was originally an insurance broker. But, one day, when signing a very important contract with th e prototype fountain pen he had brought for the occasion, it broke and leaked ink on the whole document. This accident eventually resulted in the deal getting cancelled and Waterman losing his job.

Making the best out of a bad situation, Waterman decided to build a better fountain pen and it was his design that truly made fountain pens the dominants' writing instrument of the next half-century. It wouldn't be until the 1930s that fountain pens would finally meet their match as a man responsible for that was.

He was a journalist. He had noticed too that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the vapor dry and smudge free when he tried using the same ink in a fountain pen. However, it wouldn't flow into the tip because it was too viscous. A fter seven years of trial and error, he developed a new tip for his pen, consisting of a ball. This could freely rotate in a socket.

As the ball ran along the paper, it would siphon ink from an internal cartridge and spread it out evenly. W hat Laszlo had created was the ballpoint pen. T he timing of his invention was a bit unlucky as a Hungarian Jew Laszlo was w ell aware of what was happening in Germany. So in 1938, he packed his bags and moved to Paris. While there, he encountered a lucky chance of meeting the President of Argentina, Agustin Pedro, who stole this.

He was so impressed by the ballpoint pen that he told Laszlo to emigrate to Argentina which of course he did as he wanted to be as far away from Germany as possible. Once in Argentina, Lazlo sets up a company for his pens and by 1943, he was selling them to his Majesty's Royal Air Force in the UK. This first generation of ballpoint pens wasn't perfect. However, the metal case was prone to leaking and the ink would often clog.

Most of Laszlo's non-government clients ended up returning their pens, which drove his company to the brink of bankruptcy. To keep his company afloat, Lazlo resorted to sending the rights to his pen in Europe. A man who bought the European rights to the ballpoint pen was a Frenchman, Baron M arcel. He had entered the pen business in 1945, when he had bought a damaged factory on the outskirts of P aris and used it to start making fountain pens.

Marcel fell in love with the ballpoint pen and in 1950 when he heard that Laszlo was selling the patent, he threw two million dollars of loud load together. With the patent in hand, Marcel used his considerable resources t o acquire plastic and precision stainless steel technology from Switzerland. A few years prior, the shaping machines Marcel bought were cutting-edge for their time. Capable of shaping metal down to 10 micrometers, the design of Marcel's pens was simplistic. The Pen's Barrow was shaped similarly to a pencil, making it very hard to roll off a table. Since it was made of transparent polystyrene, it was easy to see when you were running out of ink. W hat truly made Marcel's endeavor successful, however was his understanding of economies of scale.

Although they were vastly superior to fountain pens, it was very hard to justify spending the equivalent of one week's wage for one pen. Marcel however streamlined his production and thought everything in bulk, allowing him to sell his pens for a fraction of the cost. Only fifty centimes, the equivalent of eighteen cents. In the US, Marcel's initial plan was to seal the p ens under his family name. But, once people told him how English speakers were pronouncing it, he decided to drop the age. Thus, in 1950 he established societal and began flooding France with his trademark pen, which he called the 'B ic crystal'.

The pen was an instant hit, surpassing everything on the market both in terms of quality and price. Within three years, Marcel was selling 40 million pens annually. He could barely keep up with the rising demand and so he started opening subsidiaries left and right. By 1954, he was operating across Western ear and just two years later his p ens were also sold in South America and Africa.