The humble ball point pen is actually a triumph of engineering.   It’s predecessors have  had a longer tenure though.  For a thousand years, people wrote with quills.  Fountain pens, still used by some, were a great improvement.  The metal nibs were more reliable and refilling a pen instead of dipping was much more convenient.

Still, writing could be taxing.  The ink comes out of a fountain pen rather wet, which means writing requires gracefulness.  And, waiting for the ink to dry takes time.  Lazlo Biro thought it took too long.  As a journalist, he wondered if the quick drying ink used to print newspaper could be used in fountain pens instead.  That ink was too think, so he invented the ball point as a way to use the ink.  That’s right– the pen was invented to serve the ink!

Ballpoints were popular with pilots in WWII, but their inferior writing style did not make them catch on with the public after the war.  Marcel Bich improved the pen, and the Bic Cristal is still one of the best selling pens today.  Bic pen bought out the USA’s favorite fountain pen company, Waterman, and ballpoint pens became popular throughout the country.  (Waterman pens are still made under the Waterman name.  They are quite fine.)

We examined the engineering of pens y taking them apart.  Even capped pens are engineered– someone had to figure out how to make a cap stay on.  Retractable pens are a bit more complex.  Students disassembled the pens and drew exploded diagrams to show how they work.  It doesn’t matter if you draw well or not; putting pencil to paper is good for observation and figuring out the positions of the working parts.

We were lucky to have a some loans of fountain pens and a vial of ink.  Everyone was able to try the old-fashioned way of writing.  It’s a slower process, but as the photo above showed, also an enjoyable one.

What surprised (and delighted) the teacher about this lab:  How happy and involved the students were.  Adding engineering into the program from time to time is a goal of mine this year, and this is the third time we have analyzed how something works for that purpose.  More to come!