How This Pen Changed The World

This is the BIC Cristal. Possibly the most successful product ever made. No matter where you are in the

world

, you'll find

this

pen in homes, offices, schools, and virtually anywhere else. This iconic design has reached every corner of the earth and at some point in your life you have almost certainly used

this

pen. Since their launch in 1950, more than 100 billion of these pens have been sold

world

wide. Best-selling products out of the water. Surprisingly, the design has remained basically un

changed

for over 70 years and still continues to dominate the world. With 14 million sold every day, the impact this pen had on the world was monumental.

Pen prices dropped and literacy rates skyrocketed, but what made this pen so successful? We modeled every last detail to show you the incredible story behind this pen and how its clever use of physics made it the most perfect design. But to truly understand how revolutionary this pen was, we must go back in time. In the past, pens were expensive and difficult to use. Traditional pens were dirty and had to be constantly dipped in ink. Because of this, writing was considered more of an art form limited to those who knew how to use a pen. then the fountain pen.

Then the fountain pen was invented, which had a metal tip and could store ink inside the pen's reservoir. Although this was an improvement, the nib was scratchy and I couldn't control the ink flow. On top of this, they were still very expensive, costing around $150 in today's money. At that time, only about 20% of the world's population knew how to read and write, and this didn't make it any easier. But at the end of the 19th century there was a breakthrough. American inventor John Loud came up with a mechanism that fed ink onto the page using a small ball instead of a fine tip.

In theory, this would distribute the ink more evenly and prevent smearing. He had just invented the pen. While this design worked well on harder surfaces, it was too rough on paper, so his pen never sold. Decades passed and many new designs were made, but none of them could master the pen. If the ball was too tight in its socket, the ink would get stuck and not reach the paper. If it was too loose, the ink would bleed and smear all over the page. Getting this right was extremely difficult as the small ball was difficult to make with any kind of precision.

Then came Laszlo Biro, a man with a name you may recognize. He realized that the solution was in the ink. Most pins of that era used fine water-based ink that dripped, dried slowly, and seeped through the fibers of the paper. It also relied on gravity to get the ink into the ball, which, depending on the angle of the pen, gave really poor results. He began experimenting with oil-based inks, which were thicker, dried almost instantly, and settled onto the paper rather than bleeding through. This turned out to be a stroke of genius and unlocked a unique physics effect that caused the ink to be mysteriously drawn toward the ball without gravity or external forces.

This is called capillary action and it is what allows water to climb up the roots of trees and nutrients to flow through our bodies. We can see this effect in action by placing a thin tube in some water and watching it rise. But what is happening here? The attraction between the liquid and the walls of the tube is stronger than the attraction holding the particles of the liquid together, so the particles at the top are dragged down the side of the tube until the weight of the water finally cancels out the force. In Biro's pen, this effect occurred the other way around.

The ink passed through the ultra-thin walls of the tip and into the ball, ensuring that it was constantly covered in ink. Biro quickly patented his design and submitted it to the patent office using AnyDesk. It's a joke. AnyDesk didn't exist then, but it does exist now. AnyDesk, today's sponsor, is a remote access service that allows you to control your device from anywhere in the world. All animations in this video were made on a MacBook but rendered on a PC. With AnyDesk I can send Blender files to my PC and hit render no matter where I am in the world.

AnyDesk is also an easy way to send and receive files directly from other computers without uploading them to the cloud. Even with a bad internet connection, AnyDesk is incredibly fast. It has its own special codec that transfers video from your computer at an extremely low bit rate without a noticeable drop in quality. AnyDesk works on all platforms and best of all, it is free for personal use and they also have custom plans for businesses. To get AnyDesk for free and support the channel, visit anydesk.com/PRIMALSPACE   To master the pen, Biro came up with a new design that would drag the ink into the ball   without gravity or moving parts, producing a consistent, smooth line on the page .

Biro mastered the design and the pen became a hit in South America, but there was still a big problem. The cheapest pen he offered cost a whopping $190 in today's money, and although the design was excellent, it never achieved mass market success. At the time, literacy rates had only reached around 33% and pens were still a luxury item, but just a few years later, French manufacturer Marcel Bich discovered the Biro pen and saw a huge opportunity. He purchased the patents for $2 million and began designing a new and improved version that could be mass produced for a much cheaper price.

With the help of state-of-the-art Swiss watchmaking machines, he developed a method to mass produce small stainless steel balls with an accuracy of a fraction of a millimeter. Instead of using metal for the rest of the pen, he purchased machines that could mold plastic, something that had only been around for a few years at the time. This was the final result. Although it may look like just a pen, it's hard to overstate how perfect this design turned out to be. There were no moving parts, springs, or complex materials, but each element served multiple purposes. Let's take a closer look.

The pen had a hexagonal barrel like a pencil that kept it from falling off tables and made it easier to grip. It was made of polystyrene, which was resistant, economical and transparent, allowing the ink level to be seen at all times. There was a small hole in the barrel that allowed air to enter and replace the ink as it came out of the pen. The ink inside the cartridge was a special recipe that maximized the capillary effect while still producing a good quality line. The ink flowed into the tip of the pen containing the stainless steel ball.

The ball was machined so precisely that it could move enough to rotate and deposit ink on the page. When the pen was not in use, the ball created a seal that prevented ink from seeping through the bottom. If the pen were tipped over, the capillary action and surface tension of the ink would prevent it from running down the back of the pen. The cap, which also served as a clip, was made of polypropylene that absorbed impacts and prevented the pen from cracking. The pen was perfectly simple and solved all the problems that previous pens had. Above all, it was cheap and hit the market in 1950 for only $2.

It was an instant success, selling around 10,000 units daily in France during its first year. Marcel noticed how English-speaking countries pronounced his name, so he dropped the H and the name BIC was born. Marcel understood the importance of economies of scale and quickly expanded to other continents by setting up factories around the world. In 1953 he was already selling 40 million pens a year and BIC Cristal took over the world. Now anyone in the world who wanted to write or draw could do so and it was easy. The world had been secretly begging for this product and it came at the perfect time.

Over the next 50 years, 100 billion of these pens were sold and literacy rates rose from 35% to almost 90%. It's almost impossible to imagine life without this pen and the fact that its design has remained almost exactly the same from day one shows just how perfect it was. And now comes the Primal Space giveaway. The winner of the previous draw is Adrien. Congratulations! In the next giveaway we will be giving away this space shuttle print designed by Primal Space available in our store. All you need to do is register at the link below, like the video and leave a comment saying what you think of the design of this pen.

Thank you very much for watching and see you in the next video.