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 We
use them every day. We need
them to write something on a paper. They are students' close friends.
Students cannot study without them. Now do you
know what I'm talking about? That's right! I'm talking about pencils
and pens! I'm sure most of you have many pencils and pens in your
pencil cases. I also have
many of them on my desk. But did you know that one pencil can write
50,000 English words or make a line 55 kilometers
long? And have you ever wondered who invented pencils and pens,
or when did people start using them? And do you know how did people
write when there were no pencils or pens? If you want to know the
answers and learn more about pencils
and pens, just keep reading!
Who Invented the Pencil?
No one really knows who invented the pencil or when it was invented.
A long time ago, when there
weren't any pencils or pens, people used bird feathers to write. I'm sure
you're seen it in movies. But in 1795, someone started making pencils
from graphite흑연 and they became very popular. Graphite is similar
to coal. Back then, people grind the graphite and made
it into the shape of a stick and baked it. Then, they put
it inside a piece of wood. Today, people still use the same way to make pencils.
After the invention of the pencil,
someone invented the fountain pen. The fountain
pen could hold ink inside it. People
could write several pages before they
had to fill it again.
 Who
Invented the Ball-point Pen?
In 1938, a journalist named Laszlo Biro from Hungary invented the ball-point
pen. He noticed that the ink used
in newspaper printing dried quickly. So he tried using
the same ink in a fountain pen. With the help of his brother
Georg, who was a chemist, Laszlo invented
the ball-point pen. The new pen had an inside chamber which was filled
with ink. At the tip, there was a small
metal ball. The ink flowed out of the metal ball when
using it by the rolling action. The ink dried
almost immediately after contact with paper.
Why Did the Ball-point Gain Popularity?
The Biro brothers left Hungary and moved to England
in 1943 during World War II. They started
making ball-point pen there, and English pilots liked the new pen.
This was because unlike the fountain pen,
the ball-point pen didn't leak out in airplanes. The
first ball-point pens went on sale at a department store in New York
City on October 29, 1945 for 12.50 dollars each. (It's about 130 dollars
of today's money.) Similar pens went on sale before the end of the
year in England, and in most of Europe by the next year. People used to call the ball-point pen a
"Biro" because it was invented by the Biro brothers. Ball-point
pens are still widely called a biro in many
countries, especially in several European
countries, Australia and New Zealand. Today, the ball-point pen has
almost completely replaced the fountain pen
in everyday writing.
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