If you wish to see a tour de drive of modern technology and design, there’s no must visit a Silicon Valley presentroom. Simply really feel round your desk for just a few moments, and shortlyer or later you’ll lay a hand on it: the BIC Cristal balllevel pen, which is described in the Primal Area video above as “possibly essentially the most successful product ever made.” Not lengthy after its introduction in 1950, the Cristal grew to become ubiquitous world wide, so ideally did it go well with human wants at a value that might have appeared impossibly low cost not so very way back — to say nothing of the seventeenth century, when the artwork of writing demanded mastery of the quill and inkpot.
After all, writing itself was of little use in these days to humanity’s illiterate mainity. That started to alter with the invention of the fountain pen, which was certainly extra convenient than the quill, however nonetheless professionalhibitively expensive even to most of those that may learn. It was solely on the finish of the 9teenth century, a heady age of American ingenuity, that an inventor known as John Loud got here up with the primary balllevel pen.
Although crude and impractical, Loud’s design planted the technological seed that might be cultivated thereafter by others, like Laszlo Biro, who underneathstood the advantage of utilizing oil-based quite than traditional water-based ink, and French manufacturer Marcel Bich, who had entry to the technology that might carry the balllevel pen to its ultimate kind.
Bich (the foreign professionalnunciation of whose suridentify impressed the model identify BIC) figured out how one can use Swiss watchmaking machines to mass-produce tiny stainmuch less metal balls to precise specifications. He selected to manufacture the remainder of the pen out of moulded plastic, a then-new technology. The Cristal’s clear physique allowed the ink level to be seen always, and its hexagonal form stopped it from rolling off desks. Its polypropylene lid wouldn’t break when dropped, and it doubled as a clip besides. What did this “recreation changer” avant la lettre value when it got here to market? The equivalent of two dollars. As an industrial product, the BIC Cristal has in lots of respects never been surhanded (over 100 billion have been bought to this point), even by the ultra-high-tech celltelephones or tablets on which you will be learning this put up. Bear that in thoughts the following time you’re struggling with one, patchily zigzagging backwards and forwards on a web page in an try and get the ink out that you just’re certain should be in there somethe place.
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Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly referred to as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
