László Bíró

László Bíró was born in Budapest in 1899 into a Jewish family. He studied medicine without finishing, and tried hypnotism, painting, motor racing and journalism. As an editor he was irritated by fountain pens that leaked, smudged and needed refilling, and noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried almost at once. Put in a fountain pen it clogged, because it was too thick to flow through a nib.

The answer was a tiny ball in a socket at the tip, which turned as it moved across the paper, picking up ink from a tube behind it and rolling it onto the page. His brother György, a chemist, worked on an ink that was thick enough not to leak and thin enough to flow. They patented the design in 1938.

That year the Hungarian government was passing anti-Jewish laws. The brothers left for Paris, and then, at the invitation of a former president of Argentina who had met László on holiday and been shown the pen, sailed for Buenos Aires. There in 1943 they filed a new patent and set up a factory. The British government bought pens for RAF crews, because they worked at altitude where fountain pens leaked, and the name Biro became the English word for the thing.

He sold his rights to Marcel Bich, whose company still makes billions of them. Bíró stayed in Argentina, kept inventing, and died in Buenos Aires in 1985. His birthday is Argentina\'s Inventors\' Day.