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Ballpoint pens? Heck yes, ballpoint pens! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryan. It's just the two of
0:16
Speaker 1: us today, and both of us are totally astounded that
0:20
Speaker 1: you pressed play on an episode called how ballpoint pens
0:23
Speaker 1: work or something to that effect. Yeah, And when I
0:27
Speaker 1: found this, I was like no, But then I started
0:29
Speaker 1: reading it and it was far more interesting than I thought.
0:33
Speaker 1: I love ones like this where you just like, this
0:35
Speaker 1: sounds so dull that I want to actually pop my
0:38
Speaker 1: eyes out with it by a ballpoint pen, not listen
0:42
Speaker 1: to anything, But now it turns out to be interesting.
0:46
Speaker 1: Like Grass. Remember our episode on Grass you could forget
0:49
Speaker 1: the great debate over whether you should flood your lawn
0:52
Speaker 1: with a quarter inch of water or not? Yeah? Answer,
0:57
Speaker 1: you should not? Uh so, Chuck? Yes, to begin, I
1:02
Speaker 1: have a question for you. Have you ever seen a
1:07
Speaker 1: ballpoint pen? They have them? That's become one of your great,
1:12
Speaker 1: long time running jokes. I don't know what you mean, Chuck.
1:18
Speaker 1: Have you ever breathed air? Ah? Yeah? I mean I
1:24
Speaker 1: was using my black Bick ballpoint pen. Yeah, I remember today.
1:30
Speaker 1: I even remember because blue pins are for dopes. You,
1:35
Speaker 1: my friend, are out of your mind. You like blue pins.
1:38
Speaker 1: Blue pen is the only way to go, my friends.
1:41
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, the pilot G two
1:45
Speaker 1: point seven millimeter pen ink gel pen in blue is
1:51
Speaker 1: the only way to go. That's my favorite pen on
1:53
Speaker 1: the entire planet. Well, I will say today I'm using
1:57
Speaker 1: the standard Bick black. Uh, like the one that in
2:02
Speaker 1: elementary school you could take a part and make into
2:04
Speaker 1: a great spitball shooter. Oh yeah, that was. It was
2:07
Speaker 1: an off off label prescription for that. Yeah, it's the
2:11
Speaker 1: clear one, not the white plastic case, but the clear
2:14
Speaker 1: case or the you know clear pinbody. But h and
2:18
Speaker 1: I do love that pen. But I know the pin
2:21
Speaker 1: that you speak of, and I do love it because
2:24
Speaker 1: I love there's nothing like a pen that just takes
2:28
Speaker 1: to the paper perfectly. Yeah, it's immagical. That's what gel
2:32
Speaker 1: ink pens do their beautiful things. And the thing I
2:35
Speaker 1: like the reason I like blue and it comes in black.
2:37
Speaker 1: If that's your thing, you know, I'm not gonna hate
2:39
Speaker 1: on it. But if when you underline something printed out
2:43
Speaker 1: like our notes, um, and then you go back over
2:46
Speaker 1: it with highlighter, like I do, the blue really stands out.
2:49
Speaker 1: The black just kind of like blends in with the
2:52
Speaker 1: printed out words. All right, Well, here's what I used
2:55
Speaker 1: to do is and you probably remember the days when
2:59
Speaker 1: I would be looking at my highlighted text with red
3:01
Speaker 1: ink things written down because the red really popped. But
3:06
Speaker 1: then I just sort of got tired of it, and
3:08
Speaker 1: I'm just a black ink guy. You're you're sticking and picking.
3:13
Speaker 1: I'm sticking and picking. You're picking and sticking. That's what
3:16
Speaker 1: I mean. Uh So, should we talk about writing over
3:19
Speaker 1: the years. We should, as anyone listening still if you are,
3:25
Speaker 1: we're going to continue on just in case. So let's
3:28
Speaker 1: let's start about writing over there, because this is pretty interesting, right, yeah,
3:31
Speaker 1: tuk tuk. That's where we should start, tuk took. And
3:34
Speaker 1: we should shout out to Mary Bellis, who wrote a
3:36
Speaker 1: thought co little um brief thing called A Brief History
3:39
Speaker 1: of Writing that kind of ran down some points that
3:41
Speaker 1: will cover. But she points out the tuk Tuk. She
3:45
Speaker 1: doesn't call him tuk took, but that's really what she means.
3:47
Speaker 1: That's because I've trademarked it. Sure, um tuk Tuk started
3:51
Speaker 1: writing with basically sharpened stones by carving things on the
3:54
Speaker 1: size of cave walls. Easy PC. That was probably our
3:58
Speaker 1: first writing in pliment. Yeah, like no ink by this point.
4:02
Speaker 1: Um as with the Greeks when they started writing, they
4:06
Speaker 1: had a little stylus made of bone or metal or
4:08
Speaker 1: something and they would mark things on wax coated tablets
4:13
Speaker 1: and it would take always. It seems like it's the
4:16
Speaker 1: Chinese who come up with the great innovations in ancient
4:21
Speaker 1: times and still who knows. We're not allowed to read
4:24
Speaker 1: Chinese websites though, No, but they invented and really crafted
4:31
Speaker 1: Indian ink, Yes, which is pretty clever little mixture its
4:36
Speaker 1: soot um, specifically from pine smoke. Vellas says, it's pretty
4:42
Speaker 1: pretty on the nose if you ask me. And then
4:44
Speaker 1: some oil, lamp oil, and then you take a donkey
4:49
Speaker 1: and squeeze gelatine from it, which I'm wondering, like, does
4:53
Speaker 1: that mean that you have to kill the poor donkey
4:55
Speaker 1: or can you just come up and milk of gelatine?
4:58
Speaker 1: I think the donkey loves that well, I wonder because
5:02
Speaker 1: I think gelatine is actually made from hooves. I think
5:04
Speaker 1: you're right, And usually if you start making things from hooves,
5:07
Speaker 1: the animal, the hoof used to be attached to is
5:09
Speaker 1: no longer with us. So it's a sad way to
5:13
Speaker 1: make ink. But that's how they made ink for thousands
5:16
Speaker 1: of years. Actually, yeah, there was a philosopher, Chinese philosopher
5:20
Speaker 1: name Tien Chew and his inc. Was the one that
5:26
Speaker 1: that really sort of became the go to inc for
5:29
Speaker 1: for many, many many years. Yes, he called it chewink.
5:35
Speaker 1: We called it what chewink? Really? No, No, I'm making
5:42
Speaker 1: stuff up at this point. I can't tell he had
5:44
Speaker 1: the he had the idea. This was I think back
5:47
Speaker 1: around BC that he started mixing natural dyes and um
5:52
Speaker 1: things from berries, different kinds of plants um to make
5:56
Speaker 1: different colored ink. So ink went from just black two colored,
6:01
Speaker 1: and as a result, um they started attaching different meanings
6:04
Speaker 1: to these different colored inks. He admitted the four color pin.
6:08
Speaker 1: But oh yeah, I remember that. Oh I forgot all
6:12
Speaker 1: about us. Didn't they go up to like eight colors too? Yeah,
6:15
Speaker 1: they got They got pretty out of hand. And the
6:18
Speaker 1: thing that stunk about those is they never wrote really well, no,
6:20
Speaker 1: they definitely didn't. There. The gimmick was more that you
6:24
Speaker 1: could write at all in different colors in the same pin.
6:26
Speaker 1: You know, they were for elementary school kids. So one
6:30
Speaker 1: of the things that um that happened as the writing implements.
6:34
Speaker 1: And I hadn't really realized this, but as our writing
6:36
Speaker 1: implements became more and more refined, just better and better.
6:41
Speaker 1: And part of that was not just like the implement
6:43
Speaker 1: but also the types of ink way were using and
6:45
Speaker 1: how they were delivered, and then the paper whatever substance
6:48
Speaker 1: we were putting them onto. These the original things which
6:52
Speaker 1: started out is basically drawings on cave walls, got more
6:57
Speaker 1: and more um refined, and actually it grew more and
7:00
Speaker 1: more abstract, and they became our system of alphabets, letters
7:06
Speaker 1: and at first the so from what we from what
7:08
Speaker 1: we know, the first alphabet ever created was created in
7:11
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, classical Grease, by a scholar named Cadmus. And
7:15
Speaker 1: all of the um the original written alphabets that were invented,
7:20
Speaker 1: we're all upper case. Nothing about upper case. Everybody's just
7:23
Speaker 1: shouting to one another constantly. Right, And I didn't know this,
7:28
Speaker 1: but there's another word for upper case and lower case.
7:32
Speaker 1: It's magiscule and minuscule, or the actual technical terms for
7:36
Speaker 1: upper case and lower case. And the story goes that
7:39
Speaker 1: the reason they're called upper case and lower case. Is
7:42
Speaker 1: that in the days of um UH type set printing,
7:47
Speaker 1: you would keep your your magiscule letters in a different drawer,
7:53
Speaker 1: usually higher up out of reach, because you didn't use
7:55
Speaker 1: them as often than you would the minuscule letters. You
7:58
Speaker 1: keep those in the lower case. And that's where the
8:01
Speaker 1: term comes from from what I understand. Very interesting. I
8:04
Speaker 1: thought so too. Maybe the fact of the podcast, I
8:07
Speaker 1: don't know, we'll have to just keep going and find out,
8:09
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with pens. The Romans actually created
8:13
Speaker 1: a reed pen, and this makes a lot of sense.
8:15
Speaker 1: It would use stems from marsh grasses, like bamboo type
8:19
Speaker 1: of stuff, which made perfect sense because it's hollowed out already.
8:24
Speaker 1: All you do is sharpened the end of it, uh,
8:27
Speaker 1: you know, to come to a point like a little nib.
8:29
Speaker 1: Then put the ink in there, and you've got a
8:32
Speaker 1: very rudimentary pen, which you know worked pretty well for them. Yeah,
8:37
Speaker 1: apparently these things were so tight that you had to
8:40
Speaker 1: like squeeze them to squeeze the ink out of the end,
8:42
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't just like dribble out constantly, although I'm
8:45
Speaker 1: sure it's still would. It's not a perfect system. It
8:48
Speaker 1: isn't a perfect system, and there's there's still room for improvement. Um.
8:52
Speaker 1: And that came in seven hundred CE, right about or
8:59
Speaker 1: so years go, when somebody thought to use a quill
9:02
Speaker 1: from a bird feathered animal. Yeah, and that was a
9:06
Speaker 1: big one. It says in here that the longest period
9:09
Speaker 1: in history as far as writing implements goes, was the
9:13
Speaker 1: quill pen. Yeah, pretty amazing a thousand years. Yeah, I
9:17
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about that. Yeah, it was the best
9:20
Speaker 1: They basically got to the quill pen, or like until
9:23
Speaker 1: some somebody invince a ballpoint pin. This bird feather is
9:27
Speaker 1: about the best thing going. Yeah, And I mean they
9:30
Speaker 1: used so you could use a bird feather as a
9:32
Speaker 1: quill pen for about a week before it would get
9:35
Speaker 1: gummed up and you'd have to have another one. And
9:38
Speaker 1: they actually um figured out that the bird from a
9:44
Speaker 1: or the feather from a living bird plucked in the
9:47
Speaker 1: spring provided the optimal quills. And even more than that,
9:52
Speaker 1: depending on whether you're right handed or left handed, you
9:55
Speaker 1: wanted to pluck the feather from the left or the
9:58
Speaker 1: right wing. Yeah, Because if you're right handed and you're
10:03
Speaker 1: writing with a quill from a right wing, then that
10:07
Speaker 1: that guy's gonna be tickling your nose every time. And
10:10
Speaker 1: it may be fun for a little while, but what
10:13
Speaker 1: you really want is a feather from the left wing
10:16
Speaker 1: and that way, if you're right handed in that way,
10:18
Speaker 1: that feather swoops to the outside of your face. Yes,
10:21
Speaker 1: it would have having the wrong the wrong feather quill
10:27
Speaker 1: would have like just been another excuse not to balance
10:29
Speaker 1: your checkbook, you know. Yeah, and these things lasted for
10:33
Speaker 1: about a week. Um, you needed a special knife to
10:36
Speaker 1: sharpen them. Uh, took a long time to to get
10:40
Speaker 1: it kind of prepared. And they were, you know, like
10:42
Speaker 1: I said, about a week old and they were done,
10:45
Speaker 1: so they were fairly disposable, but they still held down
10:48
Speaker 1: the fort until early fountain pins for over a thousand years. Yeah,
10:52
Speaker 1: and fountain pens are their own thing. They are, um,
10:57
Speaker 1: surely you know or remember from time to time, I'm
11:00
Speaker 1: will get like a letter from somebody who's like a
11:02
Speaker 1: fountain pen enthusiast. It's like a whole thing. You remember that, Yeah,
11:06
Speaker 1: Or you get a graduation gift that's like a nice
11:09
Speaker 1: fountain pen and you're like, jeez, really, but I'm saying
11:12
Speaker 1: you and I have gotten like letters from face to
11:15
Speaker 1: like write these beautiful letters out and fountain pens. I
11:18
Speaker 1: think at least one of one person has sent us
11:21
Speaker 1: an actual, like really good fountain pen um. And I've
11:24
Speaker 1: never caught the bug, but there there is, like there's
11:27
Speaker 1: a subculture people out there are so into fountain pens
11:31
Speaker 1: that they expressed that by writing letters to one another
11:35
Speaker 1: using fountain pens. Obviously it's really cool. I mean I
11:38
Speaker 1: have never like you've never taken to it. I'm a
11:41
Speaker 1: ballpoint man through and through, but I get it. You know, sure,
11:47
Speaker 1: it's it's cool, it's classy. You're not gonna yuck their yum.
11:50
Speaker 1: In other words, no, And I don't have very nice
11:52
Speaker 1: penmanship anymore either, so it would just, you know, I
11:56
Speaker 1: kind of tie those things together, Like if you're writing
11:58
Speaker 1: a letter in a fountain pen, you don't write like
12:00
Speaker 1: I do because that would just be dumb. Right, I
12:04
Speaker 1: write like a serial killer in an insane asylum holding
12:07
Speaker 1: a cran with a fist. That's how I write. Uh.
12:11
Speaker 1: Should we take a break and jump over to the
12:13
Speaker 1: ball point Yeah, let's all right. So a ballpoint pen.
12:38
Speaker 1: You say that word over and over and it's you
12:42
Speaker 1: never really stopped to think about what that means. But
12:45
Speaker 1: in the end of that little pen and it's impossible
12:48
Speaker 1: to not just sort of obsess over this after you've
12:51
Speaker 1: maybe listened to this episode or or researched it like
12:53
Speaker 1: we did. But when I was writing today, I was
12:56
Speaker 1: just constantly thinking about that little ball. You know, it
13:00
Speaker 1: haunted you. How undersung it is? Okay, I see, I
13:05
Speaker 1: thought you were just like you. You felt like it
13:07
Speaker 1: was eavesdropping on you. You could feel it like king
13:10
Speaker 1: at the atoms in your hand or something weird like that. No,
13:12
Speaker 1: just thinking of the simple genius of this invention. It's
13:15
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of that pin is a little, small,
13:18
Speaker 1: tiny rotating ball A lot of times just steel or brass,
13:22
Speaker 1: maybe tungsten carbide. And it was revolutionary and completely different
13:28
Speaker 1: than anything that came before it. Yeah, and and to
13:32
Speaker 1: go back to the fountain pen to kind of put
13:34
Speaker 1: a button on that, Like, Yes, fountain pens are pretty awesome,
13:37
Speaker 1: and when you master using a fountain pen um you
13:40
Speaker 1: probably do like it. But if you're just an average
13:44
Speaker 1: mom who's like, look, just give me a writing implement.
13:46
Speaker 1: I want to write something down and not getting any
13:48
Speaker 1: jollies from this looking at it. From that perspective, the
13:52
Speaker 1: ballpoint pen is an improvement in a number of ways
13:55
Speaker 1: over the fountain pen, and specifically, one of the ways
13:59
Speaker 1: that it's an improved it is that you can use
14:01
Speaker 1: it up in an airplane much more easily. Yeah, the ink,
14:07
Speaker 1: there were problems with the ink at high altitudes and
14:10
Speaker 1: fountain pens, yeah, and just problems with the ink at
14:13
Speaker 1: any altitude. You know, it doesn't flow super evenly. I
14:16
Speaker 1: mean if you have a really nice pin and know
14:18
Speaker 1: how to use it, but like a cheap fountain pen,
14:21
Speaker 1: it was no good. The ink is very slow to
14:23
Speaker 1: dry and smudgy. It uh would clogg a lot. And
14:28
Speaker 1: once it's kind of clogged and gummy, then either have
14:31
Speaker 1: to be really good at cleaning it or it's just junk. Yes,
14:35
Speaker 1: so um. One of the ways that the ink comes
14:38
Speaker 1: out of a fountain pen is through air, through capillary
14:41
Speaker 1: action and air. And so since you have air in
14:43
Speaker 1: a fountain pen, that means that since ink dries in
14:47
Speaker 1: the presence of air, which is what you want when
14:49
Speaker 1: it touches the paper, it will also dry inside the pen,
14:52
Speaker 1: which is how it gets gunked up like you were
14:54
Speaker 1: talking about. But in an airplane too. When you take
14:58
Speaker 1: a fountain pen that's been down on on planet Earth
15:01
Speaker 1: for a while, that air that's in the fountain pen
15:04
Speaker 1: gets trapped in the air. So when you take it
15:07
Speaker 1: up in an airplane in a pressurized cabin, it's still
15:11
Speaker 1: like the cabin's pressurized, but it's still much less pressure
15:14
Speaker 1: than it is at sea level, which is where the
15:16
Speaker 1: pen just was. And because of this, the higher pressure
15:19
Speaker 1: air inside the pen wants to move to where it's
15:23
Speaker 1: lower pressure. Higher pressure always moves to lower pressure, I think,
15:27
Speaker 1: unless there's some Rando exception. I'm not thinking of that
15:30
Speaker 1: we're going to get a thousand emails about. But like
15:35
Speaker 1: high pressure stuff wants to move to low pressure stuff,
15:37
Speaker 1: So that high pressure air tries to move out of
15:39
Speaker 1: the fountain pen, and as it does, it pushes the
15:41
Speaker 1: ink out. So fountain pens tend to flood on planes,
15:45
Speaker 1: which again is not that big of a problem these days,
15:47
Speaker 1: but if this was the nineteen forties and you were
15:50
Speaker 1: a pilot for the Royal Air Force or a navigator
15:52
Speaker 1: or something, it was a big problem. Yeah, for sure,
15:55
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons why ball points came along. Yeah,
15:59
Speaker 1: and the the ballpoint idea had been around since the
16:02
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, but it never really took like, they can
16:07
Speaker 1: never figure out how to make a good working pen
16:10
Speaker 1: that actually was able to go to market. It was
16:13
Speaker 1: I didn't see that. It was it's been around since
16:15
Speaker 1: the eight hundred times that the original idea for the
16:18
Speaker 1: ballpoint pin. Yeah, but they could never fashion a pin
16:20
Speaker 1: that really worked well. Yeah. I would think also it
16:22
Speaker 1: would really depend on the technology of the ink, for sure.
16:27
Speaker 1: I think that was a big part of it. But
16:29
Speaker 1: it would take a journalist to Hungarian journalists named Laslow
16:33
Speaker 1: b r Oh to take a tour of a newspaper
16:37
Speaker 1: facility when he was like, wait a minute, these newspapers
16:41
Speaker 1: are coming out and they're being stacked on each other
16:44
Speaker 1: right after printing, and it's not smudging around like my
16:48
Speaker 1: my dumb old India Inc. Does. And he said, why
16:52
Speaker 1: don't we use that kind of ink put it in
16:54
Speaker 1: a pen? And not only that, why don't we take
16:57
Speaker 1: a pen that has a little time metal ball at
17:01
Speaker 1: the end that rotates. It also seals that tube so
17:05
Speaker 1: the ink doesn't come flowing out. It does double duty,
17:08
Speaker 1: double duty. And then the rotation is what draws that
17:11
Speaker 1: inc out that in a little gravitational pull and I
17:15
Speaker 1: think I might be onto something here. Yeah, and he
17:17
Speaker 1: definitely was. And this this article hilariously says that he
17:22
Speaker 1: vowed to make a pen that used fast drying ink
17:26
Speaker 1: because at the time that was a real problem. Like
17:29
Speaker 1: the the ink that you had in a pen to
17:31
Speaker 1: keep it from drying out in the pen had to
17:33
Speaker 1: be super watery. Right, So the idea of making a
17:37
Speaker 1: pen that wasn't a fountain pen that used fast drying ink,
17:40
Speaker 1: that was it was quite a vow. I'm sure the
17:42
Speaker 1: person giving him the newspaper tours like, are you sure. Yeah,
17:46
Speaker 1: he said, I'm I just vowed it, I'm gonna do it.
17:49
Speaker 1: So he did. He got together. Luckily I had a brother, George,
17:53
Speaker 1: who was a chemist. Yeah, that that was very helpful. Um.
17:57
Speaker 1: In June three he got that patent with a European
18:04
Speaker 1: Patent Office made bureau pens. It was the first ballpoint
18:08
Speaker 1: pen to be brought to market. And the British government
18:11
Speaker 1: you were talking about the Air Force, their Royal Air
18:13
Speaker 1: Force went crazy for it. So they just bought the rights. Okay,
18:17
Speaker 1: So I couldn't find that anywhere else. Really, I saw
18:20
Speaker 1: that the Royal Air Force ordered thirty thousand of these,
18:23
Speaker 1: but not that they bought the rights. Well, let's say this,
18:27
Speaker 1: they either bought the rights or all but bought the
18:30
Speaker 1: rights by being their number one customer. Right. I like
18:34
Speaker 1: how you married the two facts. Yeah, so I mean
18:37
Speaker 1: they were not only did they right well at high altitudes,
18:39
Speaker 1: but they were just sturdy. And it was a pin
18:42
Speaker 1: that you could take into battle with you. Yeah, so
18:46
Speaker 1: it wouldn't flood as they call it at high altitudes.
18:49
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was pretty a pretty durable pen um
18:53
Speaker 1: and so Bureau he patented it with his brother, George
18:57
Speaker 1: founded the the Bureau Pen Company, right, And I think
19:02
Speaker 1: that's so cute. He named it after himself, even though
19:05
Speaker 1: he and his brother did it, and he very easily.
19:07
Speaker 1: No Bureau was his last name. I'm sorry he could
19:09
Speaker 1: have named right, that's what I thought he'd done. His
19:13
Speaker 1: last name is Bereau, Okay, so that makes way more sense.
19:15
Speaker 1: I thought he'd been like, George, thank you, but I'm
19:17
Speaker 1: naming this pen after myself. But it was it was
19:21
Speaker 1: a pretty big hit. I don't think it was a
19:23
Speaker 1: commercial success right away. Um, but that big order or
19:27
Speaker 1: the purchase by the Royal Air Force, Um, definitely helped
19:31
Speaker 1: the Bureau company established itself almost simultaneously. Well, a year
19:36
Speaker 1: or two later, there was a guy in America named
19:39
Speaker 1: Milton Reynolds, and he said, I just found some of
19:42
Speaker 1: these bureau pens on a business trip I think in
19:44
Speaker 1: like Argentina or somewhere, and um, he said, I'm going
19:48
Speaker 1: to totally rip this off. And he did, and he
19:51
Speaker 1: founded a company, UM and created the Reynolds pen, which
19:57
Speaker 1: is basically the Bureau pen. Yeah, and these were really successful. Um.
20:03
Speaker 1: I saw articles as ten bucks. But I found an
20:05
Speaker 1: article from the New York Times from the nineteen forties
20:09
Speaker 1: that talked about at Gimbals uh in New York, you
20:12
Speaker 1: could buy one for twelve fifty, which was super expensive.
20:17
Speaker 1: I mean twelve fifties expensive for a single pin today.
20:21
Speaker 1: Sure you know, like a point pinoa be a real
20:23
Speaker 1: jerk to pay twelve fifty for a pen these days,
20:26
Speaker 1: with this economy. But this little article said that people
20:29
Speaker 1: all but trampled one another to get ahold of these pins.
20:33
Speaker 1: Gimbals ordered fifty thousand of them and sold thirty thousand
20:35
Speaker 1: of them in week one. Eventually there would be a
20:39
Speaker 1: lot of lawsuits, UM, back and forth about the patent. Basically,
20:45
Speaker 1: those never went anywhere because what they were essentially saying
20:49
Speaker 1: is the idea for the ball bearing, which is kind
20:52
Speaker 1: of what makes us all possible, has been around for
20:55
Speaker 1: so long that no one can really claim this to
20:57
Speaker 1: the point where like you can sue one another. That's
21:00
Speaker 1: how I could not find how Reynolds got away with it.
21:03
Speaker 1: My um my idea was that they had just filed
21:07
Speaker 1: the patent. George in Laslow had filed the patent in Europe,
21:10
Speaker 1: and um Reynolds was doing it here in the Undy.
21:14
Speaker 1: But it was that I didn't realize that there was
21:16
Speaker 1: actually a patent battle. Yeah, and then there was a battle,
21:19
Speaker 1: like Favor came on board. I mean everybody started making
21:22
Speaker 1: pens like crazy all of a sudden. Favor then eventually
21:25
Speaker 1: sued uh Reynolds because they just sued them for a
21:29
Speaker 1: shoddy product. Really, I didn't. I'm not sure how that
21:32
Speaker 1: quite works because it wasn't like they were a consumer.
21:36
Speaker 1: They get that off of the market. But uh, they
21:39
Speaker 1: were kind of right, I don't think. I don't know
21:41
Speaker 1: if they won that lawsuit, but a lot of these
21:43
Speaker 1: returns UH pins were returned. H these initial Reynolds pins
21:48
Speaker 1: were returned because they didn't work, but children with burns
21:51
Speaker 1: on their arms because the pen just suddenly caught fire.
21:54
Speaker 1: But he made almost six million dollars in nineteen five
21:59
Speaker 1: dollars in the first ti months of his company, so
22:02
Speaker 1: he was set. So by the way, Chuck, I'm on
22:05
Speaker 1: the west Sig inflation calculator. Yeah, you have it app
22:09
Speaker 1: twelve dollars. I should just have it as like an
22:12
Speaker 1: app in my brain, you know. Maybe, oh, that is
22:15
Speaker 1: the first thing I'll do, and we start adding apps
22:17
Speaker 1: to our brains. But um, twelve dollars and fifty cents
22:20
Speaker 1: and would be a hundred and seventy three dollars in
22:24
Speaker 1: sixteen cents here. Yeah, that's a little crazy for a
22:28
Speaker 1: brand new pen. If people have been living with fountain
22:32
Speaker 1: pens and they were sick of them, the idea of
22:34
Speaker 1: something that improved on that much would I could see
22:38
Speaker 1: running and droves the gimbals being like, you're you're gonna
22:42
Speaker 1: go out of business eventually, and Macy's will stick around,
22:44
Speaker 1: so tell me all your pen They also did you
22:47
Speaker 1: know it was a lot of advertising hullabaloo, Like they
22:50
Speaker 1: called them the pen of the Atomic era and sort
22:53
Speaker 1: of all that futuristic stuff. People went wild for healthy glow.
22:59
Speaker 1: But as far as my own big pen, uh, this
23:03
Speaker 1: was a revolution because, like we said, twelve fifties, a
23:05
Speaker 1: lot of dough back then in a Frenchman named Marcel.
23:10
Speaker 1: Uh would it be beache b I c h I
23:13
Speaker 1: think it's big is bi. That's why he dropped the
23:15
Speaker 1: h is so people could pronounce it. Yeah. He developed
23:19
Speaker 1: a process for making these things really cheap per unit,
23:22
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you could get a pen
23:25
Speaker 1: for twenty nine thirty five to thirty five cents. Uh,
23:29
Speaker 1: and he called it the big pen. And that really
23:32
Speaker 1: changed thing because Uh in ten ten years later he
23:35
Speaker 1: came to the United States and everyone was like, man,
23:37
Speaker 1: we've been buying all these credit expensive pens for twelve
23:40
Speaker 1: fifty Yeah, Mr Bick comes along. These aren't great early on,
23:43
Speaker 1: but they only cost you know, cents. Yeah. But the
23:47
Speaker 1: so these big pens were, I mean, they made quite
23:50
Speaker 1: a splash. And one of the ways that they did
23:51
Speaker 1: was the lower prices. Not only offered these pens for
23:56
Speaker 1: much lower prices than the other pens, they they they
24:00
Speaker 1: created competition among all the ballpoint pen manufacturers, and all
24:04
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you could get a ballpoint pen for
24:06
Speaker 1: like ten cents when three years before you would have
24:09
Speaker 1: paid twelve fifty. And it really changed the industry. And
24:14
Speaker 1: as as it just kept going and going and manufacturing
24:17
Speaker 1: got better and better, and so did two did these
24:19
Speaker 1: highly disposable, cheap ballpoint pens thanks to Bick. Have you
24:24
Speaker 1: ever like taken a good look at the big logo.
24:27
Speaker 1: It's freaky, man. It's like a little school kid with
24:30
Speaker 1: a ball head, right, yeah, ball point head. Yeah, And
24:34
Speaker 1: there's like a light reflecting off of the sphere of
24:38
Speaker 1: the ball. But it also just kind of, you know,
24:41
Speaker 1: looks like a cyclops and he's holding a pen behind
24:44
Speaker 1: his back to like, what are you gonna do with
24:46
Speaker 1: that pen? Kid? I wonder if that's how young Marcel
24:49
Speaker 1: Bick's himself. Maybe so, I don't know, he's uh into
24:55
Speaker 1: data art. So let's talk about the design of these things.
24:59
Speaker 1: The brilliant andlicity of the ballpoint pin design. Like we
25:03
Speaker 1: mentioned that the little ball there is a buffer between
25:07
Speaker 1: the paper and the ink. Uh, it rolls around it.
25:11
Speaker 1: It fits very tightly in this socket, but not so
25:14
Speaker 1: tightly that it can't roll. Because there's nothing more annoying
25:18
Speaker 1: than a ball that's stuck in place, which happens from
25:22
Speaker 1: time to time. It means your pen is toast probably
25:25
Speaker 1: probably so. But this little socket, like, I'm glad this
25:28
Speaker 1: article pointed this out. It's it's really small and it
25:31
Speaker 1: might be hard to sort of imagine it. But if
25:33
Speaker 1: you if you get in the time machine and go
25:35
Speaker 1: to your dad's bathroom, you might find a deodorant called
25:42
Speaker 1: a roll on deodorant band band roll on, And it's
25:47
Speaker 1: the same exact thing, same technology, and that you have
25:50
Speaker 1: a ball keeping that fluid inside in the reservoir, you know,
25:55
Speaker 1: from leaking out, and then as it rolls around your
25:57
Speaker 1: your disgusting armpit, some of that juice goes onto your
26:02
Speaker 1: disgusting skin. Yeah, and burns a whole clear through it.
26:06
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah did you No, I was never into
26:13
Speaker 1: roll on because it burns a hole in your skin.
26:16
Speaker 1: Spray No, I don't think I ever had in a spray. Um. No.
26:22
Speaker 1: I've always been like a solid stick, dude. I can't
26:25
Speaker 1: even use like the speedsticks stuff that's like, yeah, it's
26:30
Speaker 1: gotta be like solid. Yeah, if it's not white, great,
26:35
Speaker 1: but I mean it can't be like gel. It has
26:37
Speaker 1: to be solid like that. Yeah. See, I can only
26:40
Speaker 1: use the unscented gel stuff. I can't find unsented sticks anymore.
26:46
Speaker 1: I used to use sure because that was the only
26:49
Speaker 1: uncented stick you could find. Use men an unscented gel. Wow, well,
26:53
Speaker 1: I might have to give that a try, because it's
26:55
Speaker 1: been a while since I really gave my under arms
26:58
Speaker 1: a chemical burning. But all that stuff is not supposed
27:00
Speaker 1: to be great for you, you know, like Emily gives
27:03
Speaker 1: me the natural stuff, and you know you know what
27:07
Speaker 1: that means. It means chuck stinks. Tom's makes this great one.
27:12
Speaker 1: Um it's I think Apricot sent it. It's wonderful. Human
27:16
Speaker 1: uses it. Sometimes you use it. I've used it before,
27:19
Speaker 1: but it's hard to find the uncented natural stuff. Yeah,
27:22
Speaker 1: that's true. And then I don't know, man, you know,
27:24
Speaker 1: I just I need a little extra now. Same here, man,
27:27
Speaker 1: I need powerful chemicals to overcome the stink from my
27:30
Speaker 1: under arms. I use um acts because I'm in eighth grade.
27:35
Speaker 1: But it's the only stuff that's like a good solid
27:38
Speaker 1: stick that works with a minimum amount of application. Isn't
27:43
Speaker 1: that the stuff that just stinks to high heavens? Well,
27:46
Speaker 1: I mean, if you really slather it on or you
27:48
Speaker 1: use the body spray, it's gonna smell, but um, it
27:51
Speaker 1: has a has a scent to it. Yeah. Um, I'm
27:55
Speaker 1: using black sugar right now. Um. And just we've either
28:01
Speaker 1: gotten three new sponsors or we will never be sponsored
28:04
Speaker 1: by We're doing a lot of buzz marketing right now.
28:08
Speaker 1: It's true. But anyway, roll on any persprint technology and
28:12
Speaker 1: ballpoint pen technology are the exact same. I think that's
28:15
Speaker 1: the point we're trying to make exactly. Oh so with
28:21
Speaker 1: this ballpoint pen ball, Um, the the it's extraordinarily small,
28:27
Speaker 1: like on my pilot G two, since I use a
28:30
Speaker 1: point seven millimeter, the ball is so small that it
28:34
Speaker 1: makes a line that's just seven tenths of a millimeter wide. Yeah,
28:38
Speaker 1: that's what that means. I never knew that. It's a
28:40
Speaker 1: very very tiny, tiny little ball. Like when you look
28:43
Speaker 1: at the end of a pen, you don't really see
28:45
Speaker 1: the ball the the ball in the ball point. It's
28:48
Speaker 1: that small you have to really look. And that's a
28:50
Speaker 1: point seven. Yeah used the point one. No I haven't.
28:55
Speaker 1: I'm not crazy, Chuck. Come on, I don't want to
28:59
Speaker 1: line that unless it's like something super specific I'm trying
29:03
Speaker 1: to do, like a nice point five. Yeah, I've tried
29:07
Speaker 1: point five. I like it a little thicker than that,
29:09
Speaker 1: so I go with the seven. It's not like I'll
29:11
Speaker 1: never use a point five, but foot point seven's my
29:14
Speaker 1: my favorite for sure. Blue point seven point one would
29:18
Speaker 1: be if you're doing like cross hatching on an illustration
29:22
Speaker 1: or something, I could see it for that. I don't
29:23
Speaker 1: even know what that means. You know, when you make
29:25
Speaker 1: the lines for shading drawing, that's cross hatch. So I
29:31
Speaker 1: want everyone to go to YouTube and type in close
29:34
Speaker 1: up of a ballpoint pen, and somebody went to the
29:37
Speaker 1: trouble of doing like an extreme close up it must
29:41
Speaker 1: be through some sort of microscope video camera of a
29:45
Speaker 1: ballpoint pen making a mark on a piece of paper,
29:48
Speaker 1: and it's really fascinating interesting. So what you're talking about
29:53
Speaker 1: getting back to the way that these work. The ball
29:56
Speaker 1: holds the ink above it keeps it from spilling out,
30:00
Speaker 1: also keeps it from drying out. But when pressure is
30:02
Speaker 1: applied to the ball by pressing the pen to the
30:05
Speaker 1: paper or whatever you're writing on, it releases the ball
30:10
Speaker 1: or spins the ball so that the backside of the
30:13
Speaker 1: ball that's covered in ink spreads across the paper and
30:17
Speaker 1: that same part of the ball that just spread ink
30:21
Speaker 1: on the paper rolls back up into the socket where
30:25
Speaker 1: there's more ink to be spread onto it, and for
30:27
Speaker 1: this process to be continued on again and again wherever
30:30
Speaker 1: you're rolling the ball on the paper, Because when you're writing,
30:33
Speaker 1: what you're doing is rolling a tiny ball with ink
30:36
Speaker 1: on it all over a paper. I love it. That's it.
30:40
Speaker 1: That's a ball point pen. All right. Well, let's take
30:42
Speaker 1: another break here and we will talk more about INC
30:46
Speaker 1: and space pens right after this, Chuck, let's talk inc. Baby.
31:10
Speaker 1: All right, you're a blue man. Yep. Black. It means
31:15
Speaker 1: I like iron, you like carbon basically, So when you're
31:19
Speaker 1: talking INC in a ballpoint pin, uh, you've got a
31:22
Speaker 1: pigment or some sort of a dye that's dispersed in
31:25
Speaker 1: a liquid called a vehicle. So it's not like you
31:29
Speaker 1: can just take a bunch of pigment and throw it
31:31
Speaker 1: in a pin. It needs to be it needs to
31:34
Speaker 1: have some juice that it's mixed with, right, Uh. And
31:38
Speaker 1: that's called the vehicle. Yeah, and it can be any
31:41
Speaker 1: number of things. I actually found this really really confusing,
31:45
Speaker 1: and I looked all over the internet and just got
31:47
Speaker 1: even more confused. But tannins, which I thought were pigments,
31:53
Speaker 1: apparently are vehicles, and something you want to look for
31:57
Speaker 1: in a vehicle, like a tannin, which is something you
32:00
Speaker 1: would get from fermenting leaves or something like there's a
32:03
Speaker 1: lot of tannins in your kombucha or your wine. Right. Um,
32:08
Speaker 1: those tannins it basically adhere. They carry the ink from
32:13
Speaker 1: the writing instrument to the paper and as the as
32:16
Speaker 1: the ink dries, the tannins bind the ink to the paper,
32:21
Speaker 1: making a permanent mark. That's what you're looking for. So
32:24
Speaker 1: you've got your pigment, you've got your dye, you have
32:28
Speaker 1: your agent. Whatever it is that's coloring the ink. It
32:31
Speaker 1: can be anything from like a chemical um, an inorganic
32:35
Speaker 1: chemical like cadmium or uh. It could be carbon, or
32:40
Speaker 1: it can be iron and it would be dissolved in
32:44
Speaker 1: that vehicle tannins. And then you might also add additives,
32:48
Speaker 1: which are things that create um other properties of ink
32:53
Speaker 1: that you're looking for, Like they use gum arabic to
32:56
Speaker 1: kind of um increase the viscosity of the ink and
32:59
Speaker 1: to make it so that once it dries, it doesn't
33:01
Speaker 1: crack as much as stays kind of bendy on the paper. Yeah,
33:05
Speaker 1: and these vehicles. So does that mean like if you
33:09
Speaker 1: have a vehicle, a plant based vehicle, it's like linseed oil,
33:13
Speaker 1: does that mean linseed oil is a tannin? That's what
33:16
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like, there's not a lot of specific information
33:21
Speaker 1: that explains this out there. I don't know. In other words,
33:26
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to do a show on tannins as penance.
33:30
Speaker 1: Please say no, no, okay, good by this. But like
33:34
Speaker 1: you were talking about the organic pigments you mentioned earlier,
33:36
Speaker 1: I'm a carbon man, you're an iron man. The carbon
33:39
Speaker 1: is the black, the iron is the blue. Other inorganic
33:42
Speaker 1: compounds like chromium is where you get your yellow greens
33:46
Speaker 1: and oranges, and then or maybe cadmium red and yellow.
33:50
Speaker 1: It kind of just depends. So the thing that what
33:54
Speaker 1: you're looking for, though, if you if it's a pigment,
33:56
Speaker 1: it won't dissolve in water, but it will dissolve in
33:59
Speaker 1: some other stuff like maybe alcohol or something like that.
34:02
Speaker 1: Agents will dissolve in in solvents like alcohol, but also water.
34:07
Speaker 1: And then you have lacquers where you actually take the
34:11
Speaker 1: coloring agent and marry it to powdered aluminum that's lacquer.
34:15
Speaker 1: So those are like the three color ways of delivering
34:18
Speaker 1: colors that you can you can use. But so with
34:22
Speaker 1: this vehicle, whatever it is that you can dissolve the
34:26
Speaker 1: coloring agent and that will deliver this coloring agent from
34:30
Speaker 1: the pen to the paper. That's what you you want.
34:33
Speaker 1: So maybe the tannin is an additive, or maybe the
34:36
Speaker 1: tannin just pulls dual duty and it will deliver that
34:39
Speaker 1: stuff and dissolve um something like iron salts in it
34:43
Speaker 1: and bind to the paper as well. Who knows, we'll
34:45
Speaker 1: never know. We're gonna die not knowing what the beauty
34:48
Speaker 1: of this show is. Someone smarter than us will clear
34:51
Speaker 1: up what tannins are. I hope so, because I mean
34:53
Speaker 1: I really looked this up, man, I looked up like
34:56
Speaker 1: I looked at on like um like I think a
34:58
Speaker 1: UK Chemical Society's blog post on inks, and they didn't
35:02
Speaker 1: explain it very well. I just don't. I don't get
35:05
Speaker 1: it well. Regardless of what a tannin is or is not,
35:09
Speaker 1: what you're doing with a ballpoint pen and the ink is,
35:12
Speaker 1: you know a lot of R and D goes into
35:15
Speaker 1: that dance between thick and thin because you want it
35:19
Speaker 1: to be thick, but you also want it to dry
35:23
Speaker 1: quickly and you want it to work with You can't
35:25
Speaker 1: be so thick that it doesn't respond to gravity, because
35:29
Speaker 1: that's not a pin anymore. No, it's it's really and
35:34
Speaker 1: the reason why, uh, you can't write upside down as suppose,
35:38
Speaker 1: because it responds to gravity. If you're laying in your
35:40
Speaker 1: bed as a fourteen year old writing a love letter, uh,
35:44
Speaker 1: you know, holding the pad above your head, staring at
35:46
Speaker 1: the ceiling. You know, if you think about that pin
35:49
Speaker 1: rolling around that inc, you know there's an air pocket
35:53
Speaker 1: in that cartridge and it's gonna reverse itself, and that
35:58
Speaker 1: air is going to be at the top, and you
36:00
Speaker 1: are not gonna be able to write very long upside
36:01
Speaker 1: down right exactly. And yeah, you might be able to
36:03
Speaker 1: make as like a mark for just a moment, and
36:06
Speaker 1: then it just turns into a scratch and what you've
36:09
Speaker 1: just done is used up whatever inc was on that
36:11
Speaker 1: roller ball for a second, and then now there's no
36:14
Speaker 1: more inc. Which is I've never really thought about it.
36:17
Speaker 1: But yes, of course that's why you can't write upside
36:19
Speaker 1: down with a ballpoint pen. Yes, but we got space pens,
36:24
Speaker 1: and uh, they're pressurized and that's kind of pretty cool.
36:27
Speaker 1: Do you have one of these? No? Have you? Yeah?
36:31
Speaker 1: I got one of the gift once. Oh boy. So
36:33
Speaker 1: do you remember our Space Race episode? I cannot, for
36:37
Speaker 1: the life of me, remember, Chuck, if we continue this
36:42
Speaker 1: legend or debunked it. Do you? I don't know if
36:45
Speaker 1: we even mentioned it. I am almost certain we talked
36:48
Speaker 1: about Yeah, hopefully we said that it was apocryphal. But
36:52
Speaker 1: there's this this legend from the Space Race that UM,
36:57
Speaker 1: the American Um Space Age. See, NASA spent years and
37:03
Speaker 1: years and years trying to figure out how to get
37:06
Speaker 1: a pen into space UM because they wanted to for
37:10
Speaker 1: the astronauts something to to be able to write within space.
37:13
Speaker 1: But because of zero gravity, because you need gravity with
37:17
Speaker 1: a ballpoint pen, if it's in zero gravity or micro gravity,
37:21
Speaker 1: that inkin't gonna flow downwards and you've got a problem.
37:24
Speaker 1: So NASA spent so much money on funding and years
37:28
Speaker 1: of research trying to come up with a pen. And
37:31
Speaker 1: one day some American astronauts were talking to some of
37:35
Speaker 1: their Soviet counterparts and we're just telling them how much
37:39
Speaker 1: trouble NASA was having, And the cosmonauts said, well, we
37:43
Speaker 1: just use pencils, and the NASA astronauts are like wah wah,
37:49
Speaker 1: and NASA looks stupid and the Soviets look good, and um,
37:52
Speaker 1: America just did a big face palm. It's it's totally
37:57
Speaker 1: bunk bunk because the Russian used our pens, right they did,
38:03
Speaker 1: and initially everybody used pencils, but there was there there
38:06
Speaker 1: was something where you can find like a kernel of
38:08
Speaker 1: truth to that, like there's always a kernel of truth
38:11
Speaker 1: on any urban legend um and this one is NASA
38:16
Speaker 1: spent a lot of money on some mechanical pencils, not
38:20
Speaker 1: years of research or anything like that, but I think
38:22
Speaker 1: back in the early sixties they ordered like, um forty
38:27
Speaker 1: pencils mechanical pencils from a company out of Houston that
38:31
Speaker 1: charged them the modern equivalent of a thousand dollars each.
38:36
Speaker 1: And the public found out about this and was not
38:38
Speaker 1: very happy, right, so there was a big there was
38:42
Speaker 1: a big to do about how to replace these pencils
38:45
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to use regular pencils because the
38:47
Speaker 1: Apollo one UM launch had had gone horribly or I
38:52
Speaker 1: think a test had gone horribly and some of the
38:55
Speaker 1: astronauts had burned to death in the capsule, So they
38:57
Speaker 1: didn't want anything that could burn a forward their capsules, right,
39:02
Speaker 1: So they but now mechanical pencils were out, so they
39:05
Speaker 1: needed some sort of replacement. Well, they didn't spend any
39:08
Speaker 1: money on looking for a new pen or any years
39:12
Speaker 1: of research, because in nineteen they were approached by a
39:16
Speaker 1: guy named Paul C. Fisher and he said, I gotta
39:19
Speaker 1: pen for you. It's called a space pen. Have a look,
39:22
Speaker 1: and they went, it's almost as if you had have
39:24
Speaker 1: made this just for us, because you even called it
39:27
Speaker 1: the space pen. And did he actually name it the
39:31
Speaker 1: Fisher space pen? He named it the a G seven
39:35
Speaker 1: Anti gravity space pen. Yeah. And like I said, at
39:38
Speaker 1: the at the onset of this little part, these were
39:40
Speaker 1: pressurized and it was that kind of solved all the problem.
39:43
Speaker 1: Their pressurized to the reservoir that is to about forty
39:47
Speaker 1: pounds per square inch. And there's also a special inc.
39:50
Speaker 1: It's what you would call a Visco Elastic inc. And
39:54
Speaker 1: they liken it in our own article to like a
39:56
Speaker 1: thick rubber cement. And it actually still need to that
40:00
Speaker 1: ball though that ball point in this case, uh is
40:03
Speaker 1: necessary to liquefy it and kind of get that action going,
40:09
Speaker 1: and they say you can even write underwater, which I'm
40:11
Speaker 1: not sure how that would come into play, but maybe
40:14
Speaker 1: it's just a fun little advertising point. Yeah. But the
40:17
Speaker 1: fact that it's pressures overcomes micro gravity, so it actually
40:20
Speaker 1: works and it will work here on Earth upside down too. Yeah.
40:24
Speaker 1: And there's also uh no hole in these reservoirs, like
40:28
Speaker 1: there are regular fountain pins, so not only are you
40:32
Speaker 1: not wasting any ink, but there's no chance of leakage. Yeah,
40:36
Speaker 1: they're they're um very widely touted as lasting a hundred years.
40:41
Speaker 1: The air the air is not going to get in
40:43
Speaker 1: and dry them out. Remember the erasable pin? I do, man,
40:47
Speaker 1: I'd totally forgotten about those until this article came along. Yeah,
40:51
Speaker 1: like I and I'm sure you do too. Remember when
40:54
Speaker 1: they came on the market. It was the early nineteen eighties,
40:57
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you could have a little
41:00
Speaker 1: uh eraser mate, like the paper mate became the eraser mate,
41:05
Speaker 1: and you could write stuff and pen and as long
41:07
Speaker 1: as you got back to it within and chances are
41:10
Speaker 1: it was usually right away. But supposedly about ten hours,
41:14
Speaker 1: uh is how much time you had to go in
41:15
Speaker 1: there and erase the inc and you could erase it
41:18
Speaker 1: like the way yet it was. It was definitely not
41:23
Speaker 1: a perfect thing. But pencils are sort of the same
41:25
Speaker 1: well there, sort of the same way. Uh yeah, I
41:29
Speaker 1: guess so. Well, I mean it kind of depends, like
41:31
Speaker 1: you can definitely erase a pencil better, but it depends
41:34
Speaker 1: on the kind of paper, whether or not you want
41:36
Speaker 1: to leave no trace that anything had been written. Right,
41:39
Speaker 1: But it's definitely better than pens. But the so the
41:41
Speaker 1: trick with eraseable pens, the way that they were eraseable
41:44
Speaker 1: is that they weren't actually using ink, so there wasn't
41:46
Speaker 1: something to bind them to the paper. I mean there was,
41:49
Speaker 1: but it took a very long time to be bound,
41:51
Speaker 1: about ten hours. And the ink that they used was
41:55
Speaker 1: actually liquid rubber cement, and so when you would write
41:59
Speaker 1: in this we rever cement, you had that said amount
42:01
Speaker 1: of time before it really bound and you could conceivably
42:04
Speaker 1: erase it to totally forgot about those, but it said
42:07
Speaker 1: it's not made from dies, Like how did they color it?
42:09
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. I would say that it
42:13
Speaker 1: was probably one of the top ten wonders of modern chemistry.
42:19
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I'll buy that, Okay, Why not. Somebody's got
42:23
Speaker 1: to They're still out there too. I don't. I don't
42:24
Speaker 1: think people are is knocked out by them as I
42:27
Speaker 1: used to be. But it's not the eighties. Everybody was
42:30
Speaker 1: really coked up back then, and it was really easy
42:33
Speaker 1: to impress people, including me as a twelve year old.
42:36
Speaker 1: You were cooked up as a twelve year old. I've
42:39
Speaker 1: got one last one. Have you heard of rollerball pens? Yeah?
42:44
Speaker 1: What are those? It's basically like my pilot would, it's
42:48
Speaker 1: considered an ink jail pen. But you could also make
42:51
Speaker 1: the case that it's a rollerball pen, but a rollerball
42:54
Speaker 1: pen it sounds like something different. It's actually just a
42:56
Speaker 1: type of ballpoint pen. The difference between a rollerball all
43:00
Speaker 1: in a ballpoint pen is the ink. So a roller
43:03
Speaker 1: rollerball pen has slightly more liquid inc whereas a ball
43:08
Speaker 1: point pens inc is going to actually be paced. Um
43:11
Speaker 1: that kind of like that space pen is activated and
43:15
Speaker 1: liquefied a little more when the ball starts rolling on it.
43:18
Speaker 1: But they're they're both ballpoint pens. It's just the ink
43:21
Speaker 1: inside that differentiates the two. Yeah, well I do like those.
43:25
Speaker 1: My god, I cannot believe we got as much out
43:28
Speaker 1: of this episode as we did. And sometimes it's the
43:30
Speaker 1: paper too that you're writing on, Like have you ever
43:33
Speaker 1: gone to sign for a check at a restaurant and
43:37
Speaker 1: it's the smoothest, most like wonderful writing experience of your life? Yeah,
43:43
Speaker 1: I think it's the the you know that I don't
43:46
Speaker 1: even know what it's made out of, but that kind
43:47
Speaker 1: of shiny receipt paper in some restaurants like Golden Corral, combined,
43:53
Speaker 1: oh yeah, combined with the kind of spongy uh check
43:59
Speaker 1: book what you call those things carbon paper? No? Well, yeah,
44:03
Speaker 1: but I'm talking about the thing they deliver your your
44:05
Speaker 1: check in the little chick. I don't know what that's called.
44:08
Speaker 1: I'll bet there's a name for it. That the little
44:10
Speaker 1: pad like you know, like writing on a piece of
44:13
Speaker 1: bare paper on a wood table is not nearly as
44:16
Speaker 1: pleasurable as if there's a stack of paper. No, no,
44:19
Speaker 1: certainly not. So there's something to all that combination of
44:22
Speaker 1: all those things with the right uh, the right check
44:27
Speaker 1: from the right restaurant. But the girl the little check
44:30
Speaker 1: book though, can't um it can't be too puffy or
44:34
Speaker 1: else then you risk poking through the paper if your
44:37
Speaker 1: pens agreed. So since I can't remember. I don't know
44:42
Speaker 1: the name of what they deliver the check in the
44:44
Speaker 1: little booklet. I will say that the little things on
44:48
Speaker 1: the ends of the shoelace are called egglets, just in
44:52
Speaker 1: case anyone out there didn't know that. And if you
44:54
Speaker 1: go to you know, some farmed a table hipster restaurant,
44:58
Speaker 1: they may deliver your check a clamshell. You know, I've
45:03
Speaker 1: not seen that one. People get all cute with it,
45:05
Speaker 1: like here, we're gonna We're gonna deliver your check in
45:08
Speaker 1: an old eighteenth century wooden clothes pin and and clip
45:13
Speaker 1: it to your tie and pinch your cheeks. Yeah, just
45:19
Speaker 1: just give me the check, clip it to your tie.
45:22
Speaker 1: I'm not wearing a tie, you will be. You got
45:26
Speaker 1: anything else? I got nothing else. Well, if you want
45:28
Speaker 1: to know more about ballpoint pens, there's nothing less to know.
45:31
Speaker 1: So just go out, find your favorite, buy a few
45:34
Speaker 1: of them, and use them happily and in good health,
45:36
Speaker 1: or maybe give fountain pens to try to see if
45:38
Speaker 1: that's your thing. Uh. And since I said if that's
45:42
Speaker 1: your thing, I think I said something like that, it's
45:44
Speaker 1: time for listener mayl. They call this Colorado sar Follow
45:50
Speaker 1: up search and research, search and rescue. That's what we do,
45:55
Speaker 1: search and research. That's true, Pete and repeat. Hey, guys,
46:00
Speaker 1: Colorado's population has been growing by roughly seventeen percent every decade,
46:06
Speaker 1: which is pretty amazing. Actually, when I wasn't we were
46:08
Speaker 1: out there for those shows, I remember Den Brights talking
46:11
Speaker 1: about the population boom of the past, like twenty years. Uh,
46:16
Speaker 1: that's me talking. By the way. He said, there are
46:19
Speaker 1: a lot of new residents now wanting to experience are
46:21
Speaker 1: awesome mountains that, combined with the health renaissance across the country,
46:25
Speaker 1: has created a lot of interest in fourteen ers. Uh.
46:29
Speaker 1: And he goes on to explain as follows, Colorado has
46:33
Speaker 1: fifty eight peaks that are over fourteen thousand feet, so
46:37
Speaker 1: that's what he's talking about the fourteen ers. Some of
46:40
Speaker 1: them are easy and only a few miles with a
46:42
Speaker 1: trailhead already at eleven thousand feet. Others are brutal hikes
46:46
Speaker 1: of twenty plus miles, extremely loose rock, ropeless climbing, and
46:50
Speaker 1: death if you fall. Sometimes it's really easy to research
46:53
Speaker 1: information on the routes. But in spite of all this
46:55
Speaker 1: information out there, the allure of the mountain calls and
46:59
Speaker 1: many people had out unprepared. Every year people are rescued
47:02
Speaker 1: or died due to dumb mistakes that many websites will
47:05
Speaker 1: blatanty tell you not to make and teach you how
47:08
Speaker 1: to avoid because of the easy availability of information. And
47:12
Speaker 1: I think he there's like fourteen or dot com or
47:15
Speaker 1: something that's what he recommended. There's a healthy debate taking
47:18
Speaker 1: place among the hiking community as to whether or not
47:20
Speaker 1: Colorado should begin charging for search and rescue. Your podcast
47:23
Speaker 1: at the Nail on the Head with the pros and
47:25
Speaker 1: cons thought you might be interested in a little insight.
47:28
Speaker 1: Capital Peak is the deadliest and most dangerous of the
47:31
Speaker 1: fourteen ers, and has killed six people in the past
47:34
Speaker 1: year alone. However, five of them made an obvious mistake
47:38
Speaker 1: by taking what they thought was a shortcut that doesn't exist.
47:41
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, man, I'm planning on attempting it in
47:44
Speaker 1: two weeks, as I have done thirty eight of the
47:47
Speaker 1: fifty eight peaks That is from Tyler Nesbar and he
47:50
Speaker 1: went to Mike two of the Denver shows. Oh nice, Tyler,
47:54
Speaker 1: thanks a lot for coming out. I hope you liked it. Yeah,
47:57
Speaker 1: be safe out there, dude, for sure. Um. Yeah, Actually,
48:01
Speaker 1: it's a matter of fact, drop us a line f
48:03
Speaker 1: you're done to let us know you made it backsafe,
48:05
Speaker 1: and we'll tell everybody. Okay, yeah, it sounds like Tyler
48:07
Speaker 1: is doing it right. Okay, but just in case, you know,
48:11
Speaker 1: in case, thanks again Tyler for getting in touch. If
48:15
Speaker 1: you want to be like Tyler, well, then buy goodness.
48:18
Speaker 1: Go to our website, Stuff you Should Know dot com,
48:21
Speaker 1: look up all of our social media links, or do
48:23
Speaker 1: it the old fashioned way and send us an email
48:25
Speaker 1: to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com for
48:33
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
48:35
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com