science · 10 June 1943 · 81 years ago
In 1943, Laszlo Biro filed for a British patent (No. 564172) on a practical ball point pen with quick-drying ink. Biro was a journalist, in 1938, in Budapest (also sculptor and hypnotist) when he took out a Hungarian patent for his first design of the pen. In 1940, he escaped the Nazis by going via Paris to Buenos Aires, Argentina. There a British entrpreneur, Henry Martin, saw Biro’s pen and realized its value for air crews making high altitude navigational calculations. It could write blot-free, unaffected by low or changing atmospheric pressure. Martin bought the rights and began small scale production of ballpoint pens for the RAF. In 1945, the Eterpen Co in Buenos Aires began commercial production.
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