How does a ball point pen work?
A ball point pen is a pen that uses a small rotating ball made of brass, steel, or tungsten carbide to disperse ink as you write. All of the pens that preceded the ballpoint — whether quill, metal or fountain — used a watery, dark india ink that fed through the pen using capillary action. The problems with this technology include: • The ink can flow unevenly. • The ink is slow to dry. The ink is exposed to the air while it is flowing through the pen, so it cannot dry quickly or it would clog the pen. • When it does accidentally dry in the pen, the ink gums the whole thing up and requires meticulous cleaning. When you add to this list the fact that fountain pens tend to flood when you fly on an airplane with them, you can see that all pens up until World War II presented some significant problems for their users — the world awaited a better solution! The goal of a ball point pen is to create a device that can distribute a fast-drying thick ink, without having the ink dry out in the p
