INSIDE A BALLPOINT PEN
Discover the mechanism that gives this everyday item the power to write
WORDSSCOTT DUTFIELD
The average ballpoint pen can write up to 45,000 words before it runs out of ink
The first ballpoint pen was patented in 1888 by American inventor John J. Loud. While the initial design could be used to write on leather and wood, it didn’t work well on paper. In the 1930s, Hungarian journalist and inventor László Bíró improved upon Loud’s design and created the modern-day ballpoint pen, called the biro. As the name suggests, a ballpoint pen uses a metal ball at its tip to dispense ink from an internal cartridge. Before the ballpoint pen became a popular writing tool in the 1930s, writing with ink was limited to the uneven flow of pens such as fountain pens and quills. These relied on capillary action – a process whereby liquid flows along a narrow space without the help of other forces such as gravity – to put ink onto a page.