... but the story still deserves repeating.
Perhaps it's just the sort of item that the web is made for: it's an interesting story unto itself, and it has precise places and dates - enough to be definitive, and more than enough to leave room for nit-picking and a bit of interpretation. What's more, photographs that compliment the written information are easy to come by. In short, the origins of the ballpoint pen might be called just right for a web page. Or many web pages. As to be expected, information on the ballpoint pen (and the history of writing utensils in general) can be found on numerous web sources. Among the more interesting tidbits of information to be gleaned on the various sites is the fact, noted here
that the particular pen that was first marketed on this day was actually invented about seven years earlier, or as noted here that the principle behind the workings of the ballpoint were first patented in 1888. Another source tells us that after that first patent "350 patents for ball-type pens [were] issued over the next thirty years". Numerous sources, including this one, remind us that a major claim of the new pen was that it could write underwater. That's quite a feat, but I have to admit that even someone like me, who often runs out of the shower in order to grab a pen and write down a thought, has only very limited use for that particular quality in a pen.
Go to: Homage to an invaluable tool, or
Go to: The Boidem goes shopping.