Jewish Invention Myths: The Biro/Ballpoint Pen

As part of a new series of articles documenting the intellectual dishonesty of jews in regards to inventions and innovations were jewish in origin I thought – having already covered both the myth of the jewish invention of the Polio vaccine (1) and the British national dish of Fish and Chips – (2) to begin with a commonly claimed one: the biro/ballpoint pen.

To begin with let’s quote the claim made by jews in support of their assertion.

Aish writes that:

‘Laszlo Biro, a Hungarian-Argentine inventor, came up with the idea for the modern-day ballpoint pen. He worked as an editor for newspapers in Hungary and had a problem with ink from fountain pens, which smudged and took a long time to dry. Meanwhile, he noticed, the ink in newspaper printing presses didn’t smudge and dried quickly.

He tried putting the same ink in a fountain pen, but couldn’t get it to flow into the tip. So Laszlo Biro worked with his brother, a chemist, and developed a new tip with a ball that moved freely in a socket. The Biros presented the first working ballpoint pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931.’ (3)

This is also claimed by other sources such as ‘Boulder Jewish News’, (4) the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ (5) and ‘MNews’. (6)

The problem is that the Aish account of Biro’s ‘invention of the ballpoint pen’ is simply nonsense.

As Stephen Dowling writes in his article on the history of the ballpoint pen:

‘The creation of the ballpoint pen is usually credited to a Hungarian-Argentinian inventor László Bíró, whose name inspired a catch-all term for modern ballpoints. But it is, in fact, a lot older.

An American, John J Loud, received the first patent for a ballpoint pen back in 1888. Loud, a lawyer and occasional inventor, wanted an ink pen which would be able to write on rougher materials such as wood and leather as well as paper. His masterstroke was the revolving steel ball, which was held in place by a socket. In his 1888 patent filing, he wrote:

“My invention consists of an improved reservoir or fountain pen, especially useful, among other purposes, for marking on rough surfaces-such as wood, coarse wrapping-paper, and other articles where an ordinary pen could not be used.”

Loud’s pen was indeed able to write on leather and wood, but it was too rough for paper. The device was deemed to have no commercial value and the patent eventually lapsed.

Various inventors tried to improve on Loud’s design in the coming decade, but none were able to take it into production until Bíró in the 1930s. A journalist in Hungary, Bíró used fountain pens daily and was very familiar with their drawbacks.

“He was used to the fountain pen which was very leaky and left ink on your hands and smudged and he was very frustrated by it,” says Gemma Curtin, a curator at London’s Design Museum.

Simply adding fountain pen ink to a ballpoint pen was not the solution, however. The ink itself needed to be rethought.

László turned to his brother, Győrgy, a dentist who was also a talented chemist. László had realised the ink used in fountain pains was too slow to dry and needed something more like the ink used on newspapers. Győrgy came up with a viscous ink which spread easily but dried quickly. What’s more, the pen used far less ink than the spotting, dripping fountain pens.

“Other people had thought of it before, but it was down to him, working with his brother – who was a good chemist – and getting the texture of the ink right,” says Curtin. “It is very like printer’s ink, and it doesn’t smudge.”’ (7)

The ‘Online Pen Company’ agrees when it states that:

‘The ballpoint pen origins date right back to 1888, when the first patent was registered to John J Loud who was trying to design a pen that would reliably write on things other than paper. However the design was not suitable for everyday use, and never took off.

For decades after Mr Louds design, there were several more unsuccessful attempts at the ballpoint, most of which had trouble with even distribution of ink, and clogging. It wasn’t until a Hungarian man named László Bíró came up with a new design based on quick drying newspaper ink that the ballpoint really started to gain traction.’ (8)

As does ‘Pens Unlimited’:

‘There were a few attempts at creating a ballpoint pen before one was seriously established. One of these failed inventors was John J Loud, a Harvard educated lawyer from America, who in 1888 found that pencils were not suitable for his leather tanning business, where he would need to write on difficult surfaces. His effort was not commercially viable as it was too rough for writing on paper, resulting in the patent lapsing and the door opening up for other inventors to find a solution.

Most inventors found common problems in their designs. There was a difficulty in getting the ink to distribute evenly, with blotting and clogging not far behind. Close attention was needed to find the perfect springs, ink reservoirs and a way to control the ink flow. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that a usable ballpoint was created, by a Hungarian newspaper editor called Laszlo Biro.’ (9)

Samantha Di Nardo however tries to compromise on this history by still trying to credit Laszlo Biro as the ‘inventor’:

‘Laszlo Biro invented the ballpoint by combining the ball socket mechanism with a new paste ink.

Constantly writing as a journalist, Laszlo Bíró became increasingly frustrated with the drawbacks of the fountain pen and was desperately in need of a pen that didn’t smudge on paper.’ (10)

But ‘Pens.com’ explains why this is an incorrect claim when they write how:

‘When you research the inventor of the ballpoint pen, one name always pops up at the top: László Bíró. And, while it is true that he’s the inventor of the modern ballpoint pen, another man paved the way for Bíró.’ (11)

So, what was actually the case is that the American lawyer and businessman John J. Louds invented the ballpoint pen that was able to write very well on leather – as it was originally intended for – but didn’t perform very well when writing on paper so it wasn’t a commercial success, but never-the-less Louds actually invented and patented the ballpoint pen first not Biro.

What Laszlo Biro did more than four decades after Louds – and he would have certainly known of Louds’ invention given the references in the quotations to all the various attempts to solve the problems with using ballpoint pens for writing on paper which also beset fountain pens – was to combine a form of quick-drying newspaper ink with a variation of Louds’ ballpoint pen design.

So, in essence while Biro brought ‘the modern ballpoint pen’ to market by fixing the problem with ballpoint pens which impeded their commercial success by combining Louds’ design with printer’s ink rather than conventional writing ink: he didn’t create the ballpoint pen as that was John J. Louds.

Thus, we can definitely state that Laszlo Biro merely made the ballpoint pen commercially viable rather than created the ballpoint pen.

References

(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jonas-salk-howard-howe-and-the-myth

(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/is-the-origin-of-fish-and-chips-jewish

(3) https://aish.com/10-big-jewish-inventions/

(4) https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/

(5) https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/did-you-know-that-jews-invented-everything-g0z36e86

(6) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions

(7) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201028-history-of-the-ballpoint-pen

(8) https://www.theonlinepencompany.com/ballpoint-pens/history

(9) https://www.pensunlimited.co.uk/blog/category/a-history-of-the-ballpoint-pen/

(10) https://www.dayspringpens.com/blogs/the-jotted-line/who-invented-the-ballpoint-pen-history

(11) https://www.pens.com/blog/the-inventor-behind-the-modern-ballpoint-pen/