A Random Tribute To The Bic Pen

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, and my weapon of words since grade school has always been the Bic Pen, still made to this day...but what’s the deal and why has it never been changed or discontinued after so many years?

Well...

It was introduced in December 1950 by BiC, Société Bic of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Called the “Bic Cristal”

Between 1949 and 1950 the Bic Cristal was designed by the Décolletage Plastique design team at Société PPA. Bich invested in Swiss technology capable of shaping metal down to 0.01 millimetres (0.00039 in), which could produce a stainless steel one-millimetre (0.039 in) sphere.

Bich developed a viscosity of ink which neither leaked nor clogged and, under a ballpoint pen patent licensed from Bíró, launched the Cristal in December 1950. In 1959 Bich brought the pen to the American market: the Bic pen was soon selling at 29 cents.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City recognised the Bic Cristal's industrial design by introducing it into the museum's permanent collection. Its hexagonal shape resembles the typical wooden pencil and grants strength and three grip points giving high writing stability.

The pen's transparent polystyrene barrel and polypropylene tube show the ink-level. The ballpoint is first vitrified by heat, then ground down and milled to an accuracy of 0.1 μm (3.9×10−6 in) between spinning plates coated with industrial diamond abrasives.

Since 1991 the pen's streamlined polypropylene cap has had a small hole to reduce the risk of suffocation if the cap is inhaled.

The Bic pen can also be quickly and easily be disassembled in grade school to be used as an improvised paper spit ball shooter...

And that is a little something about the Bic pen, which is still available today as it was first designed 70years ago, and still under a $1 per pen.

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