My schools like many insisted on using ink pens. Ink pens those days we could afford was of a cheap make. So many a time the ink would flow in blobs, or stop flowing all together, or flow with very uneven consistency, and sometimes leak all over the bag. Moreover, you had to carry that bottle of ink and carefully pour it into the ink holder. So I never enjoyed using ink pens especially during exam time.
The writing from a good quality fountain pen depends to a large extent on the quality of the ink that is supplied to it. This is so because pen manufacturers have designed their pens for to work perfectly with their proprietary ink. For example Parker insists on its brand of ink, Quink.
By the 1920’s fountain pen design had gone through several iterations spanning decades, so it was considered a perfected design. So companies started attacking the ink problem. Thinking within the constraints of this system, the problem to be solved could be formulated as “produce a better ink that can flow nicely, dry quickly, affordable, non-corrosive etc.”
But the Hungarian inventor Laszlo Biro, turned this problem on its head. He knew a perfect ink already existed within the printing press industry, but it was too viscous to be of any use in a fountain pen. In a typical printing press the ink from the roller is pressed on to the paper. Using this approach he tried to replicate the roller at a much smaller scale, a ball at the tip. But still the problem of getting the ink (to flow) to the ball existed.
That is where non-Newtonian flow came to the rescue. Some liquids whose viscosity does not change under stress are Newtonian in nature. Other liquids like emulsions (used in paint) behave differently under stress then without it. It so happened that the ink used in printing press had a non-Newtonian nature, and so when the pressure was applied (to the ink) by the action of pressing the tip to the paper, it flowed and when the pressure was released it stopped flowing. Laszlo used this concept to design the ball-point pen. The design is so elegant that ball point pens can be used in any surface (like a glossy magazine or back of a credit card) and it will rarely smudge and remain legible.
In the UK a ball point #pen is sometimes referred to as a Biro in honor of the inventor. The ball point pen is a classic example of a blue ocean strategy. It made a lot of money for Biro, and the French company Bic (that commercialized Biro’s patent). Bic alone has sold over 100 billion ball point pens since 1950.
So next time you use a ball point pen, just pause to appreciate the piece of technology you are holding in your hand.
