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Ballpoint: A Tale of Genius and Grit, Perilous Times, and the Invention that Changed the Way We Write
László Bíró's last name is, in much of the world, a synonym for his revolutionary writing tool. But few people know that Bíró began his career in interwar Budapest as a journalist frustrated with spotty ink; that he escaped fascism by fleeing to Paris and, finally, to Buenos Aires; that a fellow Hungarian, Andor Goy, also played a vital role in the pen's development⎯and that, in a tragic twist of shared fate, business pressures and politics ultimately deprived both men of their rights to the ballpoint pen. Taking us from Hitler's Europe in 1938, to Argentina, where Bíró settled, and to Communist-era Hungary, where Goy lived out his life, Ballpoint is a painstakingly researched, absorbing narrative that reads simultaneously like a work of history and a novel. György Moldova is one of Hungary's most successful―and prolific―writers, and he is respected in particular for his achievements on the nonfiction front. He has earned the Kossuth Prize, Hungary's most prestigious literary honor, and his work has been translated into many languages, including English, German, Russian, and Chinese. He is the only Hungarian author to have achieved sales of 600,000 copies, and he continues to fare well in the country's bestseller lists to this day. Born in 1934, he lives in Budapest with his family. The author lives in Budapest. "Mr. Moldova tells this tale of ingenuity and disappointed hopes with considerable verve; his book is a page-turner." ⎯ Wall Street Journal "In terms of history-making inventions, the ballpoint pen is no electric light bulb, but its story is far wilder." ⎯ Maclean's (Canada's leading news magazine) "Ballpoint reads like a fast-paced mystery. Although we know from the start that its technological protagonist⎯the ballpoint pen⎯will triumph, we find ourselves repeatedly surprised by the story's unfolding episodes of international intrigue, financial deception, and legal shenanigans." ⎯ Henry Petroski, author of The Pencil and The Essential Engineer "Part biography, part historical novel, this fascinating book tells the remarkable story of László Bíró and Andor Goy, the two Hungarians who made the first workable ballpoint pen and who, despite the resounding success of their product, earned almost nothing from it."
⎯ John Emsley, author of Molecules of Murder and The Elements of Murder "The tale of László Bíró and Andor Goy ... is a wonderful illustration of the role that human passions, foibles, and genius play in shaping the world around us."
⎯ Robert Friedel, author of An Exploration in Novelty
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 7, 2024
This book was on my reading list for a long time. It has an interesting premise, at the intersection of science and history, but it was never a priority to read. I finally got to it, and enjoyed the story. There are no Hollywood touches here, no eureka moments or obsessed mad scientist inventors. Instead there were talented guys with an idea for creating a ballpoint pen that they thought they could make work and which would make them a lot of money. It wasn’t even an original idea; patents for pens of this type already existed in several countries, but they didn’t work. They were more concepts of a pen which the people behind them hoped would be taken up by others to work out the details and bring to market, while they shared in the profits.
Perfecting the pen took six long years of patient but frustrating development, in three different countries under the shadow of the Second World War. There were problems with manufacturing the pen’s 1 mm ball to be perfectly spherical, but the main issue was finding a formula for ink which would flow smoothly and consistently. Interestingly, finding the right ink was also one of Gutenberg’s key issues in developing the printing press.
The main focus of the book is László Bíró, a Hungarian journalist and inventor, and the investors who kept the research efforts going during the lean years of trial and experimentation. Eventually the pen was a stunning success, but by that time Bíró had mortgaged his rights so many times that he only got a fraction of the profits. He made some money off it, but his investors made much, much more, and then even the little stock that remained to him was swindled away by one of them.
Not surprisingly, wherever large amounts of money are at stake, it is also the story of lawsuits over contracts and patents. Before fleeing Hungary just hours before the state claimed all intellectual property rights, Bíró had had several partners, including Andor Goy, who had a contract from 1938 giving him sole rights to sell ballpoint pens in fourteen European countries, and who eventually independently brought out a successful pen. Then the communist takeover in Hungary resulted in his business being nationalized. He was fired from his own company and replaced by a Party flunky who also took his car and house, and then stopped making pens. Years later, when the government needed hard currency they tried to use Goy’s contract to take control of the pen market in Europe, but they managed the lawsuit ineptly and lost. Goy spent most of the rest of his life as a poorly paid machine operator.
The book was originally written in Hungarian and later translated. The author made an odd stylistic choice which I sometimes found disconcerting: much of the book consists of conversations which are printed as verbatim transcripts. First of all, no one was recording these discussions or taking minutes when they occurred; second, they were more than half a century old by the time the book was written, and the principle characters were all dead. Both Bíró and Goy wrote memoirs, giving their sides of the story, but memories can fade or be embellished, and there are no independent sources for these events. Writing like this gives the book a sense of immediacy, but there is no way for the reader to know how much of it is true and how much is a later re-creation of what might have been said, especially since all of the parties had vested personal and financial interests in their version of history.
Sitting here on my desk is a Uni-ball Jetstream ballpoint, my go-to pen when I need to jot something down. It is smooth and reliable, and I appreciate its quality engineering, especially since I am old enough to remember the cheap-o ballpoints of my youth, where the ink often dried up in the ball and an effort was required to start it flowing, and then it sometimes left blobs of ink on the paper. Fountain pens may be elegant writing instruments, but for getting words on paper right now, without any hassles, a ballpoint – or its later derivative, the gel pen – is the right tool for the job.
Perfecting the pen took six long years of patient but frustrating development, in three different countries under the shadow of the Second World War. There were problems with manufacturing the pen’s 1 mm ball to be perfectly spherical, but the main issue was finding a formula for ink which would flow smoothly and consistently. Interestingly, finding the right ink was also one of Gutenberg’s key issues in developing the printing press.
The main focus of the book is László Bíró, a Hungarian journalist and inventor, and the investors who kept the research efforts going during the lean years of trial and experimentation. Eventually the pen was a stunning success, but by that time Bíró had mortgaged his rights so many times that he only got a fraction of the profits. He made some money off it, but his investors made much, much more, and then even the little stock that remained to him was swindled away by one of them.
Not surprisingly, wherever large amounts of money are at stake, it is also the story of lawsuits over contracts and patents. Before fleeing Hungary just hours before the state claimed all intellectual property rights, Bíró had had several partners, including Andor Goy, who had a contract from 1938 giving him sole rights to sell ballpoint pens in fourteen European countries, and who eventually independently brought out a successful pen. Then the communist takeover in Hungary resulted in his business being nationalized. He was fired from his own company and replaced by a Party flunky who also took his car and house, and then stopped making pens. Years later, when the government needed hard currency they tried to use Goy’s contract to take control of the pen market in Europe, but they managed the lawsuit ineptly and lost. Goy spent most of the rest of his life as a poorly paid machine operator.
The book was originally written in Hungarian and later translated. The author made an odd stylistic choice which I sometimes found disconcerting: much of the book consists of conversations which are printed as verbatim transcripts. First of all, no one was recording these discussions or taking minutes when they occurred; second, they were more than half a century old by the time the book was written, and the principle characters were all dead. Both Bíró and Goy wrote memoirs, giving their sides of the story, but memories can fade or be embellished, and there are no independent sources for these events. Writing like this gives the book a sense of immediacy, but there is no way for the reader to know how much of it is true and how much is a later re-creation of what might have been said, especially since all of the parties had vested personal and financial interests in their version of history.
Sitting here on my desk is a Uni-ball Jetstream ballpoint, my go-to pen when I need to jot something down. It is smooth and reliable, and I appreciate its quality engineering, especially since I am old enough to remember the cheap-o ballpoints of my youth, where the ink often dried up in the ball and an effort was required to start it flowing, and then it sometimes left blobs of ink on the paper. Fountain pens may be elegant writing instruments, but for getting words on paper right now, without any hassles, a ballpoint – or its later derivative, the gel pen – is the right tool for the job.
April 7, 2018
Who would have thought that developing the common ballpoint pen would have required grueling years of experimentation, financial machinations, and legal problems? As with the light bulb, there wasn't a single inventor and single moment of inspiration, but rather decades of inventors building on each other's ideas until the pen could be perfected. Legal issues were inevitable, with various people working both together and apart at various times, seeking patents, and signing a series of agreements with each other as they struggled to get financing and production up and running. The generally acclaimed inventor of the final product design was a Hungarian Jew who had to flee Hungary as WWII approached. He took his ideas to Argentina, where he is highly regarded as their own hero, but where he was also bilked out of all his shares in the company by an unscrupulous partner. It was interesting that the US air force was an early adopter and customer, as fountain pens didn't handle well in the changing air pressures of flight. That had not occurred to me!
December 2, 2017
+ how the early history of the biro (ballpoint) ties into early 20th century history/political backdrop is genuinely interesting
- extremely creative nonfiction. It reads like a novel, which doesn’t quite work for me.
- extremely creative nonfiction. It reads like a novel, which doesn’t quite work for me.
November 25, 2017
DNF--mostly just flipped through it for the ballpoint bits
August 6, 2019
I never thought about how the ballpoint pen came into being. Every invention has a story.
May 27, 2013
"There was a time when I also used to think that there was order in the world, but since then how many times have I seen manipulation and intrigue emerge victorious and genuine achievement go unrewarded?"
So remarks Andor Goy, the less well remembered Hungarian developer of the ballpoint pen. It seems a fair conclusion to draw from this, another story of Hungary's exhausting 20th century. Moldova wants to us realise that Laszlo Biro lost his rights to the ballpoint through manipulation and intrigue under the rule of law in a free market economy, and Andor Goy lost his likewise under a communist regime; neither system rewarded 'genuine' achievement, both rewarded manipulation and intrigue.
It is not clear though, whose 'genuine' achievement the ballpoint pen is. As German manufacturers remarked - there didn't seem to be anything essentially new about the pen Laszlo Biro was touting to them in the 1930s. It took incremental steps in development of the product - Goy's refinement of the ink feed, Biro's discovery of an appropriate ink, and ultimately György Meyne's public relations and advertising campaign - to make the ballpoint pen the everyday item that it is. Further evidence for me against a 'winner takes all' economic system. The weakness of this book as history is that it doesn't look critically enough at who did what in the development of the 'biro'.
But written by a Hungarian novelist, I don't think that was one of the intentions behind the book. It seems to be addressing the "Should I stay, or should I go" question which must have haunted Hungarians all through the 20th century. A question that Hungarians are again asking themselves.
The focus is on the characters of Biro and Goy, as they deal with both the demands of the ballpoint project and the vagaries of Hungarian history. I prefer Goy, and find his incredible stoicism and commitment to 'genuine' work inspiring. He strongly reminds me of his coeval and co-professional, Kadar. Biro is too flighty, and Moldova's delicate analysis of his response to Hungarian anti-Semitism, suggests that he was damaged in way Goy wasn't by his own persecution as a class-enemy of the communist regime.
It also contains yet another portrayal of Hungarian refugees living in France before WWII - as treated fictionally in The Invisible Bridge, and somewhat less fictionally in My Happy Days in Hell. I'm increasingly intrigued by this community.
So remarks Andor Goy, the less well remembered Hungarian developer of the ballpoint pen. It seems a fair conclusion to draw from this, another story of Hungary's exhausting 20th century. Moldova wants to us realise that Laszlo Biro lost his rights to the ballpoint through manipulation and intrigue under the rule of law in a free market economy, and Andor Goy lost his likewise under a communist regime; neither system rewarded 'genuine' achievement, both rewarded manipulation and intrigue.
It is not clear though, whose 'genuine' achievement the ballpoint pen is. As German manufacturers remarked - there didn't seem to be anything essentially new about the pen Laszlo Biro was touting to them in the 1930s. It took incremental steps in development of the product - Goy's refinement of the ink feed, Biro's discovery of an appropriate ink, and ultimately György Meyne's public relations and advertising campaign - to make the ballpoint pen the everyday item that it is. Further evidence for me against a 'winner takes all' economic system. The weakness of this book as history is that it doesn't look critically enough at who did what in the development of the 'biro'.
But written by a Hungarian novelist, I don't think that was one of the intentions behind the book. It seems to be addressing the "Should I stay, or should I go" question which must have haunted Hungarians all through the 20th century. A question that Hungarians are again asking themselves.
The focus is on the characters of Biro and Goy, as they deal with both the demands of the ballpoint project and the vagaries of Hungarian history. I prefer Goy, and find his incredible stoicism and commitment to 'genuine' work inspiring. He strongly reminds me of his coeval and co-professional, Kadar. Biro is too flighty, and Moldova's delicate analysis of his response to Hungarian anti-Semitism, suggests that he was damaged in way Goy wasn't by his own persecution as a class-enemy of the communist regime.
It also contains yet another portrayal of Hungarian refugees living in France before WWII - as treated fictionally in The Invisible Bridge, and somewhat less fictionally in My Happy Days in Hell. I'm increasingly intrigued by this community.
March 22, 2016
The histories of important inventions are usually interesting -- each now-familiar product arose from some basic idea shaped by diverse personalities and businesses confronting legal controversies and technical difficulties. The history of the ballpoint pen has all those elements, but it has even more, because the protagonists were also players in the emigrations out of Nazi Germany, later in the East-West suspicions of the Cold War, and in the history of Latin America. In this book the English style suffers occasionally in the translation from the original Hungarian, and some parts could use more explanation, but the story itself is so strong that those problems appear minor.
September 6, 2016
Eh, really a 2.5, but I'll round up since perhaps it loses something in translation. But I suspect the bigger problem is that it's really not that compelling or original of a story (in terms of the suffering and betrayals experienced by inventors / geniuses/ artists).
March 26, 2014
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How an every day item (ballpoint pen) became just that…the book is also an intriguing adventure tale that borders on being a thriller novel as it unfolds…history with a dash of zest…what's not to like?
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How an every day item (ballpoint pen) became just that…the book is also an intriguing adventure tale that borders on being a thriller novel as it unfolds…history with a dash of zest…what's not to like?
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews