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A revolutionary approach to pen design was patented in 1888 by John J. Loud. Loud's pen replaced the steel
nib with a rotating ball that was constantly bathed in ink from a reservoir but because the ink flow was
uncontrolled, the pen leaked and so was of little practical use.
In 1938, an effective ballpoint pen was designed by 2 Hungarian brothers, Ladisalo Biro and Georg Biro. They developed a workable pen with a rolling ball. However, a problem remained - the ink used in the ballpoint pen was unsatisfactory. It clogged, it skipped, it washed off when moistened, and it disappeared when exposed to sunlight. The problem was solved in 1949 by an Austrian chemist, Franz Seech. Seech developed an even-flowing ink that dried quickly and cleanly. Since then, several other types of pans have been introduced. The rolling-ball pen, first seen in the 1960s, combines the rotating ball of a ballpoint point with free-flowing ink of the felt tip. Pentel, a Japanese firm introduced a soft, absorbent tip fed by free-flowing, often colorful ink in 1963.The Gillette Company introduced an erasable ballpoint pen, the Eraser Mate, in 1979. In 1984, another Japanese manufacturer, Nakayaina, began marketing a luminous ballpoint pen for nighttime use. |