BALLPOINT PEN

Opening:
Hello teacher and students, my name is Nguyen Dang Son, and I’m a student of
English class B1.02. Today i’m really glad to be here to talk to you about one of the
most familiar object to every of us, but almost none have ever wondered about its
origin, which is the ballpoint pen. Where and when did it come from? How does it
work? And what would our life turn out to be without it? In the next 5 minutes, I’m
going to go over its function, history, and how does it affect our daily life. My
presentation is pretty short, so if you have any questions, please wait until the Q&A
section at the end.

Function:
Ballpoint pen can be best described as a type of pen that dispense ink over a metal
ball at its point, hence the name “ballpoint”. This ball is often made of steel, brass, or
tungsten carbide.
When write, the ball’s movement will continuously take ink from the upper tube and
provide to the tip, and will immediately stop if there is no force applied from the user.
This way, ballpoint pen will be much cleaner and more reliable alternative to its
predecessors, which are dip pens and fountain pens.
A ballpoint pen can use either a spring system or simply a lid to cover or hide its
metal ball, which is extremely vulnerable to external force. The ball is also critical to
the function of ballpoint pen, so a protection method is really necessary in the
manufacture of pen.
History:
Ballpoint pen has many different names, like biro in Britain English, ball pen in
Philippine English or dot pen in Nepali.
The first patent for a ballpoint pen was issued on 30 October 1888 to John J. Loud,
who was attempting to make a writing instrument that would be able to write "on
rough surfaces—such as wood, coarse wrapping-paper, and other articles" which
fountain pens could not. Loud's pen had a small rotating steel ball, held in place by a
socket. Although it could be used to mark rough surfaces such as leather, as Loud
intended, it proved to be too coarse for letter-writing. Simply adding fountain’s pen
ink into ballpoint pen won’t work. With no commercial viability, its potential went
unexploited and the patent eventually lapsed.
Long time after, Lásló Bíró, a Hungarian newspaper editor, frustrated by the amount
of time that he wasted filing up fountain pens and cleaning up smudged pages, has
created the ink that is used in ballpoint pen nowadays with the help of his brother
György, a dentist. His innovation started when he realized that ink used in
newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge free, with that,
Bíró's innovation successfully coupled ink-viscosity with a ball-socket mechanism
which acted compatibly to prevent ink from drying inside the reservoir while allowing
controlled flow. Bíró filed a British patent on 15 June 1938
Effect:
The invention of letter and pen had a critical impact on the history of human.
Ballpoint pen, even though does not have as big of an impact to how human
thinking, had also greatly affect the way we function, in particular, the way we write.
Compare to mechanical pen, fountain pen, or even pencil, ballpoint pen does not
need to reload ink or be sharpened, which will significantly increase the speed of
writing. It is also not as easy to dirty the paper as fountain pen or mechanical pen,
and its stroke is more stable than that of pencil. Today’s ballpoint pen is also really
cheap, which makes it industrial friendly and highly accessible to even lower class
workers.

Ending:
That brings me to the end of my presentation. To sum up, over the las few minutes,
we went over the ballpoint pen’s function, history, and effects on our society. It is
hard to believe that such a small change in the way of writing would leave behind
such a big trace. Next up is the Q&A section, if you have any concern, please raise
your voice.