This Week in Literary History: The First Ballpoint Pen is Sold in New York City

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Literary History newsletter—sign up here.

In the summer of 1944, news of an exciting new invention made its way to American newspapers. A Hungarian-Argentinian journalist named László Bíró had patented a new kind of pen, one that used a ball bearing tip instead of a traditional nib, only had to be refilled once every six months, and could be used at high altitudes. Bíró had recruited his brother, a dentist and chemist, to create a quick-drying, viscous ink that wouldn’t get stuck.

Bíró wasn’t the first to imagine the ballpoint pen—an American patented a version in 1888—but he was the first to bring it to market. He originally received his patent in 1938, but his plans to market the pens were stymied by WWII; Bíró and his brother were Jewish, and fled Europe in 1941, landing in Argentina. In 1943, they began selling the ballpoint pens, known as “biromes,” in Argentina, where they soon became popular.

In 1945, two American companies, Eversharp and Eberhard Faber, acquired the North and Central American rights to the new pen for a half million dollars (about $9.4m today). But another American had gotten there first. The year before, Milton Reynolds had discovered the pen while visiting Buenos Aires, and rushed home to create his own version, the Reynolds Rocket, which hit stores on October 29, 1945.

It was a sensation. At Gimbel’s, in Manhattan, TIME reported, “thousands of people all but trampled each other … to spend $12.50 each for a new fountain pen.” (That’s about $234 today.) Gimbel’s had advertised it as the “fantastic, atomic era, miraculous pen,” that allowed you for write anywhere, for months, and ordered 50,000 units—30,000 of which had sold after the first week. This despite legal rumblings from the leapfrogged Eversharp and Eberhard Faber. 700 more stores placed orders; Reynolds made millions. Reportedly, he used his profits to buy himself a chateau near Versailles, complete with moat.

Alas, the pens were not perfect. Some 104,643 defective pens were returned in the first 8 months of sales. But the world of pens had changed for good—and very soon, Marcel Bich would come along to change it again, by making the ballpoint pens disposable (and cheap). But that’s another story.