László Bíró
Hungarian inventor (1899-1985) · Hungary · Scientists · Died at 86
László Bíró is read about 318 times a day, in 56 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
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Something wrong?He didn't invent the ballpoint pen - someone beat him by half a century - but he made it work, and that's why your Bic has his name on it.
Also in Deutsch
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About this person
Born László József Schweiger in Hungary on 29 September 1899, he eventually took the surname Bíró and carried it to Argentina. John J. Loud had patented a ballpoint pen around 1888, but it went nowhere commercially. Bíró revisited the concept and engineered a version that actually functioned reliably enough to sell. That patent, filed in his adopted country, launched the modern ballpoint pen into mass production. He died in Buenos Aires on 24 October 1985, having turned a fifty-year-old failure into the thing in everyone's pocket.
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