If you wish to see a tour de pressure of modern technology and design, there’s no must visit a Silicon Valley presentroom. Simply really feel round your desk for a number of 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 probably the most successful product ever made.” Not lengthy after its introduction in 1950, the Cristal turned ubiquitous all over the world, so ideally did it go well with human wants at a worth that will 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.
In fact, 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 might 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 will be cultivated thereafter by others, like Laszlo Biro, who belowstood the advantage of utilizing oil-based reasonably than traditional water-based ink, and French manufacturer Marcel Bich, who had entry to the technology that would deliver the balllevel pen to its closing type.
Bich (the foreign professionalnunciation of whose suridentify impressed the model identify BIC) figured out 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 mildewed 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 so far), even by the ultra-high-tech celltelephones or tablets on which you’ll be learning this submit. Bear that in thoughts the subsequent time you’re struggling with one, patchily zigzagging backwards and forwards on a web page in an try to get the ink out that you simply’re positive should be in there somethe place.
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Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e-book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
