Trivia: The Awesomeness That Is Bic Pen

Posted by Alex in Daily Trivia, Gadget on March 10, 2008 at 12:44 am


The Bic ballpoint pen was invented by Frenchman Marcel Bich in 1950.

He dropped the "h" from Bich because he feared that people would call it the Bitch pen. Technically, it’s name is the BIC CRISTAL.

Each Bic pen has enough ink for up to 2 miles (3.2 km) of writing. If you accidentally get its ink on clothing, just use alcohol-based hairspray to dissolve it.

Bic pen is incredibly useful. Besides writing, it can be used to unlock a Krytonite bike lock, make a chandelier and a weapon for intra-office warfare, as well as to perform an emergency tracheotomy (as Hawkeye did in M*A*S*H).

In 2005, BIC announced that it has sold its 100 billionth pen.


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10 comments to "Trivia: The Awesomeness That Is Bic Pen"

  1. Sofar
    March 10th, 2008 at 2:06 am

    Was that the first ballpoint pen or did they have them before that?

  2. Padraig
    March 10th, 2008 at 4:53 am

    There seem to have been previous ballpoint pens:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen

  3. avraamov
    March 10th, 2008 at 6:12 am

    it's also the best known rewinder of tape cassettes. apart from take decks. but it's difficult to write down phone numbers on an envelope with a tape deck.

  4. definitelyme
    March 10th, 2008 at 6:36 am

    i bit my way through a good few of them during my school days. I wonder if they have been through any changes since the original design and what the first colour was...

  5. Pol x
    March 10th, 2008 at 6:51 am

    László Bíró invented the ballpoint ben in 1931 so I think Bic may have cleaned up financially from the idea but it'd be a big step to attribute the invention to Bich.

  6. Pol x
    March 10th, 2008 at 6:53 am

    Of course having said that, I must afdmit that my absolute favourite pen in the whole wide world is the black Bic fine point.

    http://www.gmstationery.com.au/images/bic%20fine%20blk.jpg

    great pen.

  7. John Bigboote
    March 10th, 2008 at 9:35 am

    Actually, it was Father Mulcahy, coached by Hawkeye over the radio, that performed the tracheotomy while he and Radar were retrieving a wounded soldier from a forward aid station. Mulcahy used Radar's Tom Mix pocket knife to make the incision.

  8. Ali S.
    March 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    Ah, Bic! The pen that saved me money and hassles of pencils and fountain pens. :)

  9. isabel
    March 10th, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    re: John Bigboote

    And it wasn't a bic pen at all, was it? It was the glass tube from the padre's eyedropper.

  10. Mighty
    March 18th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    As it occured to anyone that Bic might just be the worst polluter in the world?

    A Crystal Bic ballpoint pen is roughly 15cm in lenght with a diameter of 0.5cm making it around 3 cubic cm. Multiply this figure by the oh so worthy of mentioning amount of crystal bic sold (100b), and you get about 30 000 cubic meter of non-biodegradable crap! That's not to mention all the other one-time-use crap they make. Think about it the next time you draw a 3.2km line with one of these.

    P.S.: For those living in one of the two countries in the world not using the metric system, use your crystal bic to make the math!


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