16, The So-Called "Fountain Pen Ballpoints"

[rhr]

And here is one of the many "first" commercially successful ballpoints. It's not what you expect, if you're American, that is, the Reynolds "Rocket", but it is what you expect if you're from Britain, or "the continent". It’s the "Biro" patent, 2,258,841. Biro preceded Reynolds by about 3 or 4 years, but there are many ballpoint patents that preceded the Biro, and many that came after it. However, in Europe "a Biro" has almost become synonymous with a ballpoint, in the same way that "an Eversharp" has become synonymous with a mechanical pencil in the US.

 

But here's the goofy thing about almost all of these leaky, smudgy, undependable, early ballpoint pens with the ink that wouldn't dry. The patents for almost all of them refer to the instrument as a "Fountain Pen" in the title of the patent. They sometimes even refer to the ball-tip as a "nib". Now, that's really quaint. Yeah, and annoying, too. It was such a new thing that they didn't know what to call it yet, in order to differentiate the ballpoint from the true fountain pen, so they used the same old name for it. It leads to such bastardizations as "Fountain Pen Of The Ball Point Type" in patent 2,592,406. The problem was compounded by the fact that most of these early ballpoints filled directly into the barrel like fountain pens, instead of having their own proprietary refills. This went on from 1941 until well into the 1950s, when the problematic ballpoint finally became more dependable and quite ubiquitous. Then, finally, it got its own name, usually "Ball Point Writing Instrument", or "Ball-Point Pen", or "Ball-Tipped Pen", or some variation on that. I call it simply a ballpoint. Simply and unceremoniously and with no respect.

 

As the character Peter Engel says in the novel Racines de sable, "The ballpoint pen has killed the art of calligraphy in everyday handwriting", meaning that it has killed the calligraphic quality of everyday handwriting.

 

George Kovalenko.

 

:ph34r:

Edited March 21, 2007 by rhr

[rhr]

You see, this is what a "Fountain Pen Ballpoint" should look like, 2,487,340, maybe... ;~)

 

George Kovalenko.

 

:ph34r:

[O'Hare]

I refer to ballpoints the same way. Until a couple years ago, I've seen people referring to ballpoints as "fountain" pens.

[RLTodd]

Well..... you are confusing definitions of english words as they were used in the past with the way they are commonly used today.

 

Originally the vessel that retained the ink was the "fountain." The pointy metal thing that we refer to as the "nib" today was called the "pen." So there identifying it as a "fountain pen pf the ball pointed type" would appear to be correct.

 

English is a living language and it evolves. Now things have evolved to where we call them "ball point pens" and ignore the presence of the fountain of ink in the barrel.

[kissing]

In the second patent....what holds the ball in place? It looks as though the ball would fall off while writing

[antoniosz]

In the second patent....what holds the ball in place? It looks as though the ball would fall off while writing

As in any ball point, the diameter of the opening is smaller than the ball

[EdwardHowland]

I was listening to a vintage radio program the other night, an episode of "Dragnet" from the early 50's and a certain piece of evidence in the case was referred to as a "ball point fountain pen".

[rhr]

I was listening to...an episode of "Dragnet" from the early 50's...

Nice find, Ed. That's just the right era for this kind of early, mixed-up terminology, a time when the consensus of opinion hadn't yet finalized the terms and settled upon those with which we are familiar.

 

How did you come across that particular episode? It's too bad that all those early radio and television shows have not been digitized and placed online in a word-searchable form, otherwise a lot more of these kinds of gems would be turning up.

 

George Kovalenko.

 

[EdwardHowland]

I was listening to...an episode of "Dragnet" from the early 50's...

Nice find, Ed. That's just the right era for this kind of early, mixed-up terminology, a time when the consensus of opinion hadn't yet finalized the terms and settled upon those with which we are familiar.

 

How did you come across that particular episode? It's too bad that all those early radio and television shows have not been digitized and placed online in a word-searchable form, otherwise a lot more of these kinds of gems would be turning up.

 

George Kovalenko.

 

 

Hi George, Sorry for the long delay here. I don't get a chance to peruse this site as often as I'd like. As for the Dragnet, it was mere chance. I'd downloaded a whole lot of episode and was listening more or less in broadcast order when the words "fountain pen" caught my attention. I rewound it and found the reference to "ballpoint fountain pen" and wondered just what sort of writing instrument they were talking about. The characters apparently saw nothing unusual in the terminology.