Jul 3, 2012

Ball-Point Pen - Invention | Basic/Original/First Patent - John Loud & Laszlo Biro


The first ball point pen wasn't made to write on paper. It was designed to write on leather. Credit of its invention goes to John Loud, a leather tanner, who also patented it. 
The patent CA32643 was issued on 1889-10-28. Its details, PDF Copy etc aren't available.

This patent was the first patent on a pen using a rotating ball in a socket, which is the basic construction of a ballpoint pen, it can be considered as the basic or the original patent for Ballpoint pen.

However, many inventors tried their hand at developing a commercially successful ball point pen for writing on paper.

Most successful of them was LASZLO JOZSEF BIRO, a newspaper editor, who thought of using the quick drying and more viscous newspaper ink to solve problems of leaking and clogging. 

GB498997 is one of the earliest patents by Biro describing his version of a ball point pen which was effective in writing on paper and did not have any leakage problems. The patent was filed on 1938-06-15 and published on 1939-01-17.