As an iconic design classic, the Bic Biro must come in for praise. It falls into that small category of products that follow you through your life and that you can actually have a deepfelt belief for. Their 4- ink blue and white bodied biro looked as fresh and cool to me when I was a teenager as it does today. Like misplacing my drawing pencil, if I can't find one of these biro's on my desk it's enough to cause panic. And I KNOW that they're pinched by my colleagues!! The article below was published in FX Magazine on 31st March 2009 and is clearly from a kindred spirit.
Published:31-March-2009
By Simon Bond, FX Magazine
By Simon Bond, FX Magazine
Sitting at the back of the class at my school only ever had positive connotations in my peer group. If you managed to bag the back right-hand desk, ideally with an accomplice, you ruled the room. Intellect had little to do with such a preference.
A down-and-dirty survival instinct and a competitive desire to win the next battle were the real drivers as one engaged in an early and primitive form of paint-ball. The weapon of choice? It had to be the 5inbarrelled 8mm calibre Bic Biro. Stripped of its refill and end bung this stealth weapon, coupled with ink-covered paper pellets, was the bane of many a teacher and Daz-deprived mother.
But what of the beginnings of such a marvellously simple and effective weapon? One has to go back 70 years to two Hungarian brothers – Messrs Lazlo and Georg Biro. The story goes that Lazlo, a journalist, had noticed that the ink used to print his newspaper dried quickly and smudge-free. He tried it in his fountain penbut, finding that the ink wouldn’t flow from a regular nib, got together with his chemist brother Georg and developed a pen tip which used a metal ball-bearing.
The ball-bearing’s rolling movement combined with a capillary action to draw the ink from the cartridge ensured a smooth flow, and the Biro pen was born. The product, essentially the first ball-point pen, was launched and patented in 1938.
It evolved further over the next few years and was embraced by the RAF during the Second World War as, unlike fountain pens, the Biro didn’t leak or explode at high altitudes.
Inevitably, competitors also established themselves with similar designs, but it wasn’t until 1950 that a French manufacturer of pen cases, Marcel Bich, came on to the scene. Apparently, Monsieur Bich was not impressed with the poor quality and seemingly high price of the ball-point pens on the market, so he approached the Biros and agreed to pay them a royalty on their patent.
Two years later Bich had satisfied his self-imposed brief of a developing a precision instrument which wrote evenly and reliably for a long time, and which could be sold for an affordable price. He dropped the “h” from his surname and launched the Bic Crystal ballpoint pen in 1952. It was an instant success.
All these years later the Bic Biro has hardly changed at all, and it is arguably one of the best-selling products of all time, with more than 100 billion having been produced. Daily worldwide sales exceed 14,000,000 pieces (that’s more than 160 a second!).
Strangely though, and perhaps this explains such high sales, they have a habit of disappearing. Let’s face it, how many Bic Biros have you owned or “acquired”, as is often the case, that have actually run out of ink? See – it doesn’t happen – they just vanish before they expire. We all know they get chewed but, despite that, logic dictates that there should be piles of them cluttering our home and work environments.
That said, they do get used for some bizarre applications – there are websites which explain how to perform an emergency tracheotomy with a Bic Biro. Other, fishing-focused sites, suggest that the child-friendly lid (the hole introduced in the top of the lid a number of years ago was in response to the number of children accidently swallowing the top and choking), makes a great “slidy boom” (don’t ask, I’ve really no idea). And of course, as already mentioned, many schoolboys used them as weapons.
But regardless of these other uses, the Bic Biro has made a name for itself being an excellent, fit-for-purpose, well-priced and competent piece of product design. In fact it is one of those few products by which the category has become known; just like Hoover with the vacuum cleaner, everyone the world over knows the generic term for a ballpoint pen is Biro.
A down-and-dirty survival instinct and a competitive desire to win the next battle were the real drivers as one engaged in an early and primitive form of paint-ball. The weapon of choice? It had to be the 5inbarrelled 8mm calibre Bic Biro. Stripped of its refill and end bung this stealth weapon, coupled with ink-covered paper pellets, was the bane of many a teacher and Daz-deprived mother.
But what of the beginnings of such a marvellously simple and effective weapon? One has to go back 70 years to two Hungarian brothers – Messrs Lazlo and Georg Biro. The story goes that Lazlo, a journalist, had noticed that the ink used to print his newspaper dried quickly and smudge-free. He tried it in his fountain penbut, finding that the ink wouldn’t flow from a regular nib, got together with his chemist brother Georg and developed a pen tip which used a metal ball-bearing.
The ball-bearing’s rolling movement combined with a capillary action to draw the ink from the cartridge ensured a smooth flow, and the Biro pen was born. The product, essentially the first ball-point pen, was launched and patented in 1938.
It evolved further over the next few years and was embraced by the RAF during the Second World War as, unlike fountain pens, the Biro didn’t leak or explode at high altitudes.
Inevitably, competitors also established themselves with similar designs, but it wasn’t until 1950 that a French manufacturer of pen cases, Marcel Bich, came on to the scene. Apparently, Monsieur Bich was not impressed with the poor quality and seemingly high price of the ball-point pens on the market, so he approached the Biros and agreed to pay them a royalty on their patent.
Two years later Bich had satisfied his self-imposed brief of a developing a precision instrument which wrote evenly and reliably for a long time, and which could be sold for an affordable price. He dropped the “h” from his surname and launched the Bic Crystal ballpoint pen in 1952. It was an instant success.
All these years later the Bic Biro has hardly changed at all, and it is arguably one of the best-selling products of all time, with more than 100 billion having been produced. Daily worldwide sales exceed 14,000,000 pieces (that’s more than 160 a second!).
Strangely though, and perhaps this explains such high sales, they have a habit of disappearing. Let’s face it, how many Bic Biros have you owned or “acquired”, as is often the case, that have actually run out of ink? See – it doesn’t happen – they just vanish before they expire. We all know they get chewed but, despite that, logic dictates that there should be piles of them cluttering our home and work environments.
That said, they do get used for some bizarre applications – there are websites which explain how to perform an emergency tracheotomy with a Bic Biro. Other, fishing-focused sites, suggest that the child-friendly lid (the hole introduced in the top of the lid a number of years ago was in response to the number of children accidently swallowing the top and choking), makes a great “slidy boom” (don’t ask, I’ve really no idea). And of course, as already mentioned, many schoolboys used them as weapons.
But regardless of these other uses, the Bic Biro has made a name for itself being an excellent, fit-for-purpose, well-priced and competent piece of product design. In fact it is one of those few products by which the category has become known; just like Hoover with the vacuum cleaner, everyone the world over knows the generic term for a ballpoint pen is Biro.
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