The Inky Sage

Not so much a post today, as a photograph. On the right you will see a picture of the great man Laszlo Biro. Biro (1899-1985) was a Hungarian journalist who noticed that newspaper ink dried more quickly than the ink in fountain pens. However, it was too viscous to put the one inside the other. So he and his brother came up with the ballpoint which is known today as the biro, although technically Biro should be capped up as, like Hoover or Photoshop, it remains a proprietary name.

As a strange point of linguistic imperialism, Biro was bought out by a Frenchman called Marcel Bich, who started manufacturing Bic Biros. I once bought a Bic Biro and noticed that it said on the side Made in France. What amused me was that this was a French company making a French product and I had bought the Biro in France. But it still said Made in France in English.