If you wish to see a tour de pressure of modern technology and design, there’s no must visit a Silicon Valley presentroom. Simply really feel round your desk for just a few moments, and shortlyer or later you’ll lay a hand on it: the BIC Cristal balllevel pen, which is described in the Primal Area video above as “possibly probably the most successful product ever made.” Not lengthy after its introduction in 1950, the Cristal grew to become ubiquitous around the globe, so ideally did it swimsuit human wants at a value that may have appeared impossibly low-cost not so very way back — to say nothing of the seventeenth century, when the artwork of writing demanded mastery of the quill and inkpot.
After all, writing itself was of little use in these days to humanity’s illiterate mainity. That started to vary with the invention of the fountain pen, which was certainly extra convenient than the quill, however nonetheless professionalhibitively expensive even to most of those that may learn. It was solely on the finish of the 9teenth century, a heady age of American ingenuity, that an inventor known as John Loud got here up with the primary balllevel pen.
Although crude and impractical, Loud’s design planted the technological seed that may be cultivated thereafter by others, like Laszlo Biro, who underneathstood the advantage of utilizing oil-based moderately than traditional water-based ink, and French manufacturer Marcel Bich, who had entry to the technology that might carry the balllevel pen to its ultimate kind.
Bich (the foreign professionalnunciation of whose surtitle impressed the model title BIC) figured out methods to use Swiss watchmaking machines to mass-produce tiny stainmuch less metal balls to precise specifications. He selected to manufacture the remainder of the pen out of moulded plastic, a then-new technology. The Cristal’s clear physique allowed the ink level to be seen always, and its hexagonal form stopped it from rolling off desks. Its polypropylene lid wouldn’t break when dropped, and it doubled as a clip in addition. What did this “sport changer” avant la lettre price when it got here to market? The equivalent of two dollars. As an industrial product, the BIC Cristal has in lots of respects never been surhanded (over 100 billion have been offered so far), even by the ultra-high-tech celltelephones or tablets on which you’ll be learning this put up. Bear that in thoughts the following time you’re struggling with one, patchily zigzagging forwards and backwards on a web page in an try and get the ink out that you just’re positive have to be in there somethe place.
Related content:
Montblanc Unveils a New Line of Miles Davis Pens … and (Type of) Blue Ink
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e-book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
