DEVELOPMENT OF THE BALL PEN
The ballpoint pen has come a long way in recent years. From a ballyhooed beginning following World War II, it has now become the most popular mode of handwriting in the United States.
The first patent on a ball pen was issued October 30, 1888, to one John J. Loud. His was an instrument for marking on rough surfaces having a tiny rotating ball held in a socket and fitted with a means for supplying a heavy, sticky ink to the ball.
An ordinary steel ball bearing was used in this first ball pen, but it proved too coarse for letter writing. Improved techniques in grinding and measuring ball bearings for aircraft instruments during World War II eventually led to the modern ball pen.
The ball pen as we know it today, originated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1944 with Lazlo Biro. Successful production of the Biro pen was due to an accurately ground ball rotating smoothly in a brass seat. The seat was formed by pressing the ball into the previously machined brass socket to form its own impression. The smooth rotating ball enabled ball pens for the first time to write reasonably even lines similar to those of fountain pens.
Biro obtained United States patent rights on his invention and later sold them to Eversharp. An entrepreneur named Milton Reynolds, however, got the jump on Ever- sharp and at Christmastime, 1945, introduced the ball pen to merchandise-hungry Americans. The Reynolds pen proved less than satisfactory in performance, although it was a sales success at $12.50 due to its unique features and claims. It was the pen that was said "to write under water." Every maker of traditional pens jumped onto the bandwagon with the exception of Parker, which felt the release of the product was premature from a technical standpoint.
Eversharp introduced its ballpoint pen in the spring of 1946. It, and models which followed from a number of other manufacturers, did not perform particularly well either. The idea was intriguing -- a pen with reliable ink control which writes for months without needing filling. But, when buyers put the early postwar models to the writing test the item slid in popularity. The drop-off was monumental as the original asking price of $12.50 skidded to less than 50 cents.
The first ball pens sold by Biro were unreliable, it seems, due to the heavy ink used. The ink either flowed too freely or not at all. Competitors developed gravity-flow inks held in rubber sacs, and then in brass tubes, which proved most popular. Forced flow of ink by means of a layer of heavy grease as a "follower" improved performance.
Yet, ball pens were not really successful until new inks, better quality control and more affordable pricing entered the picture in the early '50s. Slowly, but surely, the ball pen came of age. One manufacturer got bankers to endorse his product. People had been fearful of a transferable signature. Then other users of important documents were gradually convinced that this new pen was acceptable for use by customers and for carrying a writer's signature.
Following fastidious research, Parker brought out its first ball pen in 1954, and with it came a relatively individualized writing by ball not previously provided. Parker introduced the efficient Jotter with a variety of point sizes, a rotating cartridge and large-capacity ink refills.
The original Jotter featured the later-patented rotating refill, offering the writer the advantage of even ball wear and no-wobble, smooth writing. The cartridge moved 90 degrees every time the user "clicked" the pen. This rotating feature was to become important to the specialty advertising industry. The advertiser found that he now had available a writing instrument that could present up to four different messages to potential customers through a "window" in the pen with the touch of a button.
In 1954, the Parker Jotter, nine years behind the failed Rocket pen, was ready to challenge market leadership in the U.S. At that time, the leader was PaperMate. In terms of sheer unit volume -- not dollar sales -- it is now believed that Bic is the leader.
A major technical development in ball pen writing was unveiled by Parker in 1957, with the introduction of a textured tungsten carbide ball, incorporated in the Jotter. With this improvement, Parker gradually made headway with its T-Ball Jotter and, by 1961, it became the best selling ball pen around the world in the quality (over $1.00) price category.
The textured ball, still in use in Parker ball pens and refills because of its technical superiority, is a technologically perfect sphere that literally grips writing surfaces, including those that are rough, greasy or slick. Advances in the technology of sintering -- the controlled bonding of metal particles by heat transfer -- allowed Parker to produce a sintered sphere that holds more ink inside than on the surface. It is one millimeter in diameter, approximately the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
A T-Ball surface is actually composed of some 50,000 polished surfaces and pits, with pits joined by even smaller channels. The channels and pits are continuous throughout the interior of the sphere, approximating the interior structure of a sugar cube. Most of the major ball pen brands now employ a textured ball. General Electric Company is a major supplier.
Another advance in Parker ball pen technology came in 1963 with the introduction of the stainless steel ball socket -- outlasting significantly the then-used soft bronze socket and better matching the durability uf the T-Ball surface. The stain- less steel socket helped the Parker ball pen produce a better writing line because of greater strength and its resistance to corrosion.
Other technical improvements in the Jotter came later with improvement in paste inks, offering greater resistance to weather and extremes of air pressure. This resulted because of Parker's worldwide experience as a pen maker. Because the Jotter is sold in every market of the free world, it must be built to perform in the heat of the Sahara, the altitudes of the Andes and the bitter cold of Alaska.
The Jotter today remains one of Parker's best selling writing instruments. Nearly 17 million Jotter pens are sold throughout the world each year. They are offered with a stainless steel cap, with barrels in more than 30 colors.
Jotter refills are available in five different point sizes and a choice of four writing ink colors. And, because of Parker's confidence in the quality and reliability of the T-Ball, these refills are used in every Parker ball pen from the popular-priced Jotter and Big Red to the solid-gold Presidential model.
Recent tests show that a Parker ball pen refill in black will produce more than 28,000 linear feet of writing -- more than five miles -- before running out of ink. This is 7,000 feet more writing service than the nearest competitor.
