Uniball pens were invented to rid the world of ink stained hands. For millennia, man had devised means and ways to be able to capture in print the visions in their minds. Prehistoric man used all sorts of natural dyes to draw on cave walls; later on they chiselled the images on stone. It was not until the invention of the papyrus that man was able to achieve the art of printing. Egyptians used a finely carved stick that was dipped in a dye that could dry on the papyrus. Centuries later, writing evolved some more by the invention of ink, and when the stump of a feather was finely carved and sharpened, man could now write with ease on paper.The uniball pens were still far in the future.
Prelude to the uniball pens
However, feather in ink pens were messy. One needed a blotter to quickly dry the ink and make it transportable, otherwise the ink would run into the paper and the whole message would be useless. John Loud, a leather craftsman developed a cartridge with ink inside and a ball at the end to mark the leather before cutting. Even if this was patented later, the product was not put into good news and neither did it capture the attention of anyone.
In 1938, a Hungarian journalist with the name of Laszlo Biro noticed that the ink used in newspapers dried fairly quickly and did not run or smudge. He decided to place the thick ink in an ink cartridge and place a ball which rotated while picking up the ink from the cartridge and leaving it on the paper.
Uniball pens inventor fails to obtain patent
By 1940, the British government bought the licensing rights of Biro’s patent for the war effort. The British Royal Air Force needed a new type of pen that their pilots could use without having ink spilling all over the place. Can you imagine a feather and quill set thousands of feet in the air while doing reconnaissance work during a war? The success of the performance of the ball pen for the Air Force caught the world’s attention. However, Biro neglected to get a U.S. patent for his invention, and that as they say, was history in the making.
Uniball pens first came out as a uniball roller, the first metal point roller pen, and even up to the present day standards, it is still the preferred choice by working professionals who expect that their writing pens would deliver.
Uniball pens develop further
An innovative design to the uniball pens is the gel grip. The metallic barrel of the uniball pens is encased in a rubber grip that can provide comfort on the fingers. With the gel grip, the development of the callous would be lessened.
In awareness of the plight of ecology, uniball pens now have acid-free gel ink that is smooth, solid and vivid. Although the ink does not dry as fast as regular pen ink in uniball pens, it dries fast enough that even left handed writers do not need to fear smudges from occurring.