It's a fixture in school, work, desk drawer and the kitchen "black hole", also known as that drawer over by the fridge. You carried it your backpack, purse, pocket, or clipped to your spiral notebook or "Pee-Chee" folder. It is the BIC Crystal ball-point pen. I bet you didn't know that the pen carried to school by your grandparents, in their blue jeans or "poodle skirt" pocket, is the same one you have in the hand not holding your iPhone....
The BIC Cristal ballpoint pen. Virtually unchanged from its debut in 1950, the BIC was developed by Marcel Bich in the late 1940s. Bich opened his pen manufacturing business outside of Paris in late 1944 after the Nazis "high-tailed" it back to the land of beer, bratwurst and Hitler. The most advanced designs in plumage at the time were coming from Argentina. Bich saw one of these Argentine ball-point pens during the Nazi occupation, and he was impressed. Lazlo Biro had manufactured and patented this new and improved design, becoming the premiere, and most advanced ball-point in the World. Bich wanted in on this...why should Argentina get all the glory and pleasures of seamless cursive doled out in millions to hordes of sweaty students in their droll English classes right after P.E.? I mean, they had Evita Peron...who could want for anything more?
Beginning in 1949, Bich went to work creating the most perfect pen known to man. He hired a plastics design team for the pen's case, he acquired equipment out of Switzerland capable of machining a ball for the tip of the pen at only 1 millimeter so the ink would flow freely, and he created his own brand of ink that would not clot or clog. Lastly, he acquired patent licensing from Lazlo Biro's company in Argentina, and voila...the BIC was born. It is the epitome of industrialized design. It has flat sides, like a pencil, so when you grip it, there are 3 points of finger contact. It is made entirely of plastic making it cheap to mass-produce It has a clear barrel, or case, so you can see how much ink is left, and best of all, it was inexpensive and disposable. The "Atomic Pen", as it was originally named, really looks, feels and fills the part of mid-century functionality. It came to the U.S. market en-masse in 1959. It was a bit pricey, originally costing a whopping 29 cents (almost 3 bucks in today's dollars), but it was the only pen you needed, guaranteed to work, every time...
Prior to 1991, the cap did not have a hole in it. Apparently this was a problem if the original cap was swallowed. Aside from nipping off the cap's tip, there have been no other changes to the original 70 year old design, save for different colored inks that diverge from the original blue. One last thing. Have you ever wondered why there is a little hole in the clear barrel? That is drilled in to equalize the pressure inside the pen with the outside, so its ink will continue to flow consistently. Without pressure differential, the BIC Crystal would cease to write. There is beauty in engineering, so apparent in this enduring relic from the Atomic Age.
Is it any wonder this exact pen was inducted into the New York Museum of Modern Art?
