If you wish to see a tour de drive of modern technology and design, there’s no have to visit a Silicon Valley presentroom. Simply really feel round your desk for a number of 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 turned ubiquitous all over the world, so ideally did it go well with human wants at a worth that will 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 referred to as John Loud got here up with the primary balllevel pen.
Although crude and impractical, Loud’s design planted the technological seed that will be cultivated thereafter by others, like Laszlo Biro, who underneathstood the advantage of utilizing oil-based fairly than traditional water-based ink, and French manufacturer Marcel Bich, who had entry to the technology that would carry the balllevel pen to its last type.
Bich (the foreign professionalnunciation of whose surtitle impressed the model title BIC) figured out the right way 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 mildewed 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 bought to this point), even by the ultra-high-tech celltelephones or tablets on which you will 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 to get the ink out that you just’re positive have to be in there somethe place.
Related content:
Wes Anderson Directs & Stars in an Advert Celebrating the one hundredth Anniversary of Montblanc’s Signature Pen
Montblanc Unveils a New Line of Miles Davis Pens … and (Form of) Blue Ink
Vermeer with a BiC
Neil Gaiman Talks Dreamily About Fountain Pens, Noticebooks & His Writing Course of in His Lengthy Interview with Tim Ferriss
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
