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Five Greatest Little Office Helpers

Introduction

The office is a rapidly changing environment and always has been. Some new de-

vices come into the office and seem to make things worse, others are so quickly

internalised that you literally cannot remember how you did without them.

Here are some that seem, to most people asked, to do the job. The office is a

rapidly chang-

ing environ-

Idea 57 – Writing at ten thousand feet (Biro) ment and

always has

The inconvenience of having to dip a pen continuously to replenish its ink been.

supply stimulated the invention of the fountain pen produced in the first

place by the American inventor L.E. Waterman. The real breakthrough in conven-

ience, though not necessarily legibility, was the development of the ball point pen.

Lazlo Biro, who of course gave his name to the whole genre, patented the first

satisfactory model in the late nineteenth century. Biro noticed the type of ink used

in newspaper printing presses dried quickly leaving the paper dry and smudge free.

He decided to create a pen using the same ink. The thicker ink would not flow from

a regular pen nib so Biro devised a new point by fitting his pen with a tiny ball

bearing at its tip. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink

from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. He patented the idea in 1938.

The breakthrough for Biro came when the British Royal Air Force bought the

licensing rights to his pen. They needed a replacement for the fountain pen, which

leaked when used at high altitude.