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Làszló Bíró (1899-1985, Hungary): Ballpoint Pen
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Some inventions are born in troubled times. When Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro developed the ballpoint pen in 1938, the technical part of the process proved the least troubling. The larger issue was that the inventor had to flee his (occupied) country to escape anti-Semitic legislation.
When Laszlo Biro worked as a journalist in Budapest in the 1930s, fountain pens were the writing tools of choice. But the ink would take time to dry and tended to smear, especially when writing on-the-run, as the reporter's job oftentimes requires. For a practical alternative, Biro needed to look no further than the printing house of his employers.
Biro became fascinated with the relative ease at which newspaper ink dried upon hitting the paper. Could this be the solution he and his colleagues were pursuing? Injecting the same ink into a fountain pen, Biro found that things weren't as easy as he had anticipated: The ink was too dense, and wouldn't flow into the nib. But instead of changing the ink, Biro decided to modify the method of applying the ink to paper.
Working with his brother Georg, an experienced chemist, Biro conceived of a new concept for a writing instrument. The ink would be stored in a slender tube that connected to a small ball bearing at the tip of the pen. This tip was free to turn in the socket and would coat itself with ink from the cartridge as it rolled over the paper.
That same year, Biro received the French patent for his ballpoint pen before moving to Argentina. There, he worked independently on refining his invention, mainly focusing on the delicate ballpoint tip. Named Eterpen, his first pen hit the Argentinean market in 1945.
To this day, the ballpoint pen is known in some parts of the world under the generic term "biro" in honour of its inventor.