What’s the Point of Having a Ball?

A revolutionary story of innovation leading to the ‘Biro’ ballpoint pen and everyday disposable culture…

Using a pen to leave our mark is falling from favour and increasingly it’s the touch-screen and fingertip that are replacing paper and ink. But once upon a time, and not so long ago, cheap plastic ballpoints were everywhere. They’re still to be found aplenty in office stationery cupboards, school stores, hotel lobbies, and on shop counters. They’re certainly no longer the specialist piece of equipment or prestige item they used to be, but as their era draws to a close they’ve gained enough popularity among artists and illustrators to become recognised as a medium in their own sub-genre that some call ‘penting’…

When I would cover the development of ballpoint pens in my history of design lectures, I really didn’t need to illustrate my point with a slide because most if not all of the students would have one in their hand. Some would recall the dubious fun of using the plastic tubes as spitball blow-pipes, or the vented caps as wheezy whistles. How many had ever thought about how the little plastic, ink-filled stick had got there, though? Or what would become of it…

The story starts in the late nineteenth-century, with a specialist pen used by tanners and…