Write On!
a humble hardworker
Your AI-free reminder that you can find or create joy while also feeling fear, rage, despair, and other prickly crap.
Welcome to our annual solstice-ish ADVENTure calendar of daily joys and treats.
Today’s post is honoring the much overlooked ball point pen.
I’m going to try very hard to refrain from going back 40,000 years to cave paintings, then traipsing through the history of writing implements. Up until about 75 years ago, writing instruments, specifically pens, were costly, messy, and difficult to use. Writing was a treacherous sport that required specific and persnickety tools. Take quill pens. Made of not just any feather, but ones from a goose’s annual moult. In order to use them, they needed to be carved precisely to hold tiny amounts of ink when dipped into the pot. Quill written pages look wonky, as the amount of ink dispersed decreases, lines go from thick to thin. Messes were made.
Thanks, industrial revolution for making metal nibs possible. First as dip pens, then with a refillable ink reservoir as a fountain pen. Still fussy, like their predecessor the quill, they required a purpose designed Goldilocks surface that was neither too hard nor too soft. Hence writing desks.
Pen ownership was cost prohibitive, limited to the wealthy and well-educated. Why own a pen if you can’t read or write? How do you learn to read or write if you don’t own a pen (or pencil)?
The ballpoint pen was a huge deal, using a small metal ball bearing to regulate the flow of ink. And not the same kind of ink in dip and fountain pens, but an oilier, more viscous ink that would sit on top of the paper and dry faster. It went through a few iterations before Marcel Bich bought László Bíró’s patent and perfected the tool. Bíró’s 1938 metal version cost about $180 in today’s dollars. Bich made the casing out of clear, injection-molded, inexpensive polystyrene. The ink level is visible throughout the roughly 2 km of writing. When it runs out, no messy refill required, simply get a new pen. The barrel shape mimics a pencil, for a comfortable grip and to keep it from rolling away. They sold for $2 in today’s money.
This pen, known as the Bic Crystal, was introduced 75 years ago this month, in December 1950. The design has not changed. In fact, it was highlighted (teehee) in the Museum of Modern Art’s Turning Points of Design exhibit. Over 120 billion Bic Crystal pens have been sold. That’s more than the cumulative human population on earth.
If you look around your house, work space, and bag, you probably have a selection of different kinds of pens: felt tip, gel, roller ball (a kind of love child between a ball point and fountain pen), and a humble Bic or two.
What an embarrassment of riches this would have been less than 100 years ago. In all of human history, we’ve had to work hard to pull thoughts out of our head and write them down. Again, I won’t take us back to clay tablets.
Next time you pick up a pen, take a moment to appreciate its slow, then fast, evolution. Marvel at the inexpensive power to doodle, write checks to pay for electricity1, play hangman, and author the great American novel or utter drivel.
Okay, the downside is that all 120 billion of those pens will exist in landfills for far longer than any of us or the brilliant words, or letters, we write with them.
see you tomorrow
use code CHEESEISJOY for 15% off of arty shit and art
I’m always open to ideas, suggestions, shenanigans, tomfoolery, collaborations, cheese, snacks, and field trips.
You can find my art here and here. I offer custom workshops and design. I am the proud guardian/custodian of a 17 year old cheeseburger named Patty.
If you are a free subscriber, please consider supporting my efforts to make the world a less shitty place. Pick an annual price that feels comfortable for you and allows me to get paid for my work.
All photographs and art are by me, Rubi McGrory, unless otherwise noted.
I occassionally use affiliate links. Support the arts however you can.
words and images © Rubi McGrory 2021-2025
My sister lives in Wallingford, CT where the only payment the city accepts for electricy and water bills is by check, dropped off at city hall.
Truly great post.
I recently switched to fountain pens because of the landfill issue, but there is no denying the utility of the ballpoint, especially with the evolution of gel inks etc.
You (one of my must-read substack) publishing this today is a sign. I am in the process of starting a new community in Substack for people who like to write with pen and paper: I would love to reprint this post there next month, with all attribution and links etc. Let me know if you’d be agreeable to that!