The Inks Running Out?

Today I wrote a shopping reminder list .....

Post It Notes - Last Ballpoint Refuge?

I used a pen and Post It note ....

.... When I suddenly realised that this is the only occasion, apart from occasional birthday or Christmas cards, when I use a pen and paper to write in cursive script. So am I part of the last generation to be writing, and using ballpoint pens and paper?

Should in fact, ballpoint pens and paper be things of the past in places such as school work and exams, to reflect the real world we live in. I mean, if no one writes anything in a non digital format these days (or do they?), then should school work and exams not reflect this?

Sometimes, we office based people, forget that there are a world of people who have to write notes and reports in pen and ink; Hospital Doctors and nurses for example, have to note patient records, and there are countless other occupations, where written cursive is still used. But as usual, there are those who believe that as the standard of written English handwriting and spelling gets ever worse, we have to accept the real implications of that decline. The question centres around, why we are asking children to sit down for three hours with a pen and paper, when it's something they would never do in their professional lives?

Except as I have pointed out, the professional lives assumed in that question, are those in IT, or in offices, or, well, in fact most of the Professions ... but not necessarily the lives of manual workers, or those others working with directly the public such as plumbers etc. However I accept that with notepads getting ever more common, and email addresses easy to obtain, then almost all work correspondence (including printing invoices), can be carried out, without the need to use a pen and paper ... but I believe that everyone should be able to perform the basics of reading, legible cursive writing, and decent spelling in the language of the country .... not spell checker and e-fonts.

Legible Cursive Script An Exception These Days?

Is that too old fashioned, or is that too much to expect as a basic minimum from the education system? But its a fact that even the very best UK universities are considering introducing e-exams.

Wooden Scribe Stylus, The Quill, The Dip Pen and Fountain Pen - All Gone ....

All this made me think, if the wooden scribe stylus, the quill, the dip pens and fountain pens, have all long gone, then are we on the cusp of the ballpoint pen going as well, at least in the first world. It is still the world's most-used writing instrument. It will exist in developing nations for at least another 100 years - even big economies such as China and India, still have millions in relative or absolute poverty who won't be going digital soon.

Now the idea of dispensing a steady flow of ink, which has been placed in a thin tube whose end was blocked by a tiny ball, held so that it could not slip into the tube, or fall out of the pen on to paper, has been around for quite a while. However, manufacturing standards, inks and other issues meant that each time it was patented, the patent lapsed because it wasn't possible to create a reliable version.

Stratopen Birome - The First Modern Ballpoint Pen ......

This was finally perfected (as we know the ballpoint pen today, give or take few tweaks), by a Mr László Bíró, a Hungarian-Argentine newspaper editor (with the assistance of his brother György, a chemist). They filed a British patent on 15 June 1938, but started manufacture in Argentina under the product name of the "Birome", after fleeing from the Nazi's in 1941 (they were Jewish), and with the help of another refugee, Juan Jorge Meyne.

It was in fact the British government who seriously took up the product in 1943 during WWII when it was found that fountain pens wouldn't work in the Bombers at high altitudes (although why not use a pencil, springs to mind). This meant that at the end of the war, the 'biro pen' had already crept into common usage, and many manufacturers took up production, usually under license for the rights from Birome. Strangely, in Argentina, the success of the Birome ballpoint was limited, perhaps as there was no great incentive to abandon the fountain pen.

In America, although a license for the rights from Birome was granted to the Eversharp Co, another American manufacturer copied the design, made some alterations (enough to get their own US Patent), and produced their own ballpoint ..... so in Britain and the US (the two leading world economies in 1945), the ballpoint pen was commercially successful, and the success just spread across the globe, as the pens became very cheap to make, and local economies could support their usage. Fountain pens continued, but never really became as cheap as ballpoints, and became a slight affectation when being used (I used one myself, while going through 'a teenage phase' LOL).

Perhaps its not surprising that the world's most popular pen is Bic's 'Bic Cristal', the 100 billionth of which was sold in September 2006. It was launched in 1950, and has gone on to sell 57 per second, much faster and more in numbers than any other brands .... but they are not the cheapest anymore.

So whilst the ballpoint pen won't disappear overnight .... we may be at the beginning of, the start of, the end of this writing instrument.