In 1943, the US Patent Office received an application for a device that would turn the writing industry upside down, but the inventor himself would never see big money. This is the story of how a refugee from Budapest created a tool for pilots, and a French baron turned it into the most mass-produced product of the 20th century.
September 29, 1899 — László József Schweiger was born in Budapest, a man who would later take the surname Bíró and enter history under it. Journalist, hypnotist, artist — he collected professions like evidence for a future case. In the early 1930s, Bíró watched children rolling balls through puddles: the metal ball left behind an even wet trail that didn't smudge or drip. Simple physics — but for a man tired of fountain pens with their blots and leaks, this was a revelation.
Bíró worked in a print shop and saw how quickly printing inks dried — too viscous for a nib, but ideal for a different carrier. Together with his brother György, a chemist, he began developing ink with the right consistency. In 1931, the first prototype of the 'Go-Pen' appeared — a device with a rotating ball at the tip that picked up ink from a reservoir and transferred it to paper. Simple mechanics: the ball rotates, gets wet, writes. No capillaries, no air pressure — just friction and gravity.
In 1938, Bíró filed a patent application in Great Britain (GB498997A). The design included a steel ball inserted into a narrow channel with a gap of fractions of a millimeter, and a reservoir with oil-based pigment inks. The pen no longer needed to be dipped in an inkwell — the pen carried its ink supply inside. But in Europe, a different story was already beginning.
December 31, 1938 — Bíró, a Jew by birth, fled Budapest to France. The antisemitic laws of the Horthy regime left no options — staying meant losing everything, including life. He carried not money, but blueprints and several pen samples. France seemed safe, but a year later the occupation began, and Bíró was packing again — this time for Argentina, where he arrived in 1940.
In Buenos Aires, he found a partner — Juan Jorge Meyne, a businessman ready to invest in production. They founded a company and named the pen 'Birome' (a portmanteau of Bíró and Meyne). Production went slowly: precision machinery was needed for processing balls, a chemical laboratory for inks, casting equipment for bodies. In 1943, Bíró filed a patent application in the USA (US2491082A), where he described an improved design with a ball about a millimeter in diameter and ink viscosity hundreds of times greater than water.
The Argentine pen was expensive — no less than $12 apiece, which at the time was the price of a good book. There was no mass market. But there was one group of buyers who needed exactly this pen.
The British Royal Air Force (RAF) faced a problem: at altitudes above 3,000 meters, fountain pens leaked. Atmospheric pressure dropped, air in the reservoir expanded and pushed ink through the nib's capillaries. Pilots returned with ink-soaked pockets and unreadable navigation logs. They needed a tool that didn't depend on pressure — and here appeared Bíró's pen.
British merchant Henry George Martin began buying batches of 'Birome' and selling them to the RAF. The mechanics of the ballpoint pen didn't require air pressure: ink was fed by gravity and capillary action in the gap around the ball, and the ball itself was hermetically seated in its socket. At altitude, the pen worked the same as on the ground. The military appreciated it: reliability, no leaks, ability to write at any angle. Orders became serial.
Bíró received profit but didn't control patents outside Argentina and the USA. European manufacturers began copying the design, relying on the British patent of 1938, which expired after its statutory term. The most successful turned out to be a man who invented nothing new at all.
Marcel Bich — a French baron, owner of a writing implements factory — saw the ballpoint pen in the late 1940s and understood: the problem wasn't the technology, but the price and complexity. Bíró made an expensive reusable pen with a metal body and replaceable cartridges. Bich decided to make a disposable one — cheap, simple, mass-market.
He bought out the patent license (the exact sum is unknown, the legend of $2 million is a myth), simplified the design to the limit, and launched production. In 1950, the BIC Cristal appeared — a transparent plastic body, steel ball 1 millimeter in diameter, oil-based inks. The body was injection-molded in seconds, the ball stamped, the inks mixed pigments with mineral oil. Cost fell to cents.
Price for the buyer: $0.29 versus $12 for Bíró. A forty-fold difference. BIC wasn't selling a tool — it was selling a consumable. The pen could be lost, broken, forgotten — and bought new without regret. By the late 1950s, BIC Cristal became the standard in schools, offices, banks. By the early 21st century, over 100 billion had been sold — more than people have ever lived on Earth.
Bíró received no share, no royalties. His patents expired, licenses sold, control lost. He continued living in Buenos Aires, worked as a consultant, invented other devices — an automatic transmission, laundry fragrance. None brought money.
October 24, 1985 — László Bíró died in Buenos Aires. Argentina declared September 29 (his birthday) Inventors' Day. In the country, he's remembered as a national hero — a man who brought the world a writing instrument and did so as a refugee. In many languages, the ballpoint pen is called 'biro' (United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) or 'birome' (Argentina). The name became generic — but brought no fortune.
BIC continues to produce billions of pens annually. The company is valued in the billions of dollars, its products are on all continents. Marcel Bich entered history as the man who democratized writing — made it accessible to everyone. Bíró entered as the inventor whose idea changed the world, but whose wealth went to others.
The history of the ballpoint pen is an investigation with a known ending: the inventor creates, the entrepreneur scales, capital wins. Bíró solved the problem for pilots at altitude, Bich solved the problem for billions of people on the ground. Which of them is more important — a question with no definitive answer. There are only facts: one died recognized, the other died rich, and the pen outlived them both.