填空题
.One chilly autumn morning in 1945, five thousand shoppers crowded the pavements outside Gimbels Department Store in New York City. The day before, Gimbels had taken out a full-page newspaper advertisement in the New York Times, announcing the sale of the first ballpoint pens in the United States—the new writing instrument.
In fact, this "new" pen was not new after all, and was just the latest development in a long search for the best way to deliver ink to paper. In 1884 Lewis Waterman had patented the fountain pen, giving him the sole rights to manufacture it. This marked a significant leap forward in writing technology, but fountain pens soon became notorious for leaking. In 1888, a leather tanner named John Loud devised and patented the first "rolling-pointed marker pen" for marking leather. Loud's design contained a reservoir of ink in a cartridge and a rotating ball point that was constantly bathed on one side with ink. Loud's pen was never manufactured, however, and over the next five decades, 350 additional patents were issued for similar ball-type pens, though none advanced beyond the design stage. Each had their own faults, but the major difficulty was the ink: if the ink was thin, the pens leaked, and if it was too thick, they clogged. Depending on the climate or air temperature, sometimes the pens would do both.
Almost fifty years later, Ladislas and Georg Biro, two Hungarian brothers, came up with a solution to this problem. They set about making models of new pen designs and creating better inks to use in them. Ladislas was determined to construct a pen using the same type of ink. Georg came up with the idea of fitting his pen with a tiny ball bearing in its tip. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball bearing rotated and picked up ink from the ink cartridge which it delivered to the paper.
The first Biro pen, like the designs that had gone before it, relied on gravity for the ink to flow to the ball bearing at the tip. The Biro brothers had a rethink and eventually devised a new design, which relied on capillary action rather than gravity to feed the ink. In 1938, as World War Ⅱ broke but, the Biro brothers fled to Argentina, where they applied for a patent for their pen and established their first factory.
In fact, this "new" pen was not new after all, and was just the latest development in a long search for the best way to deliver ink to paper. In 1884 Lewis Waterman had patented the fountain pen, giving him the sole rights to manufacture it. This marked a significant leap forward in writing technology, but fountain pens soon became notorious for leaking. In 1888, a leather tanner named John Loud devised and patented the first "rolling-pointed marker pen" for marking leather. Loud's design contained a reservoir of ink in a cartridge and a rotating ball point that was constantly bathed on one side with ink. Loud's pen was never manufactured, however, and over the next five decades, 350 additional patents were issued for similar ball-type pens, though none advanced beyond the design stage. Each had their own faults, but the major difficulty was the ink: if the ink was thin, the pens leaked, and if it was too thick, they clogged. Depending on the climate or air temperature, sometimes the pens would do both.
Almost fifty years later, Ladislas and Georg Biro, two Hungarian brothers, came up with a solution to this problem. They set about making models of new pen designs and creating better inks to use in them. Ladislas was determined to construct a pen using the same type of ink. Georg came up with the idea of fitting his pen with a tiny ball bearing in its tip. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball bearing rotated and picked up ink from the ink cartridge which it delivered to the paper.
The first Biro pen, like the designs that had gone before it, relied on gravity for the ink to flow to the ball bearing at the tip. The Biro brothers had a rethink and eventually devised a new design, which relied on capillary action rather than gravity to feed the ink. In 1938, as World War Ⅱ broke but, the Biro brothers fled to Argentina, where they applied for a patent for their pen and established their first factory.
填空题
1. What material was the first ballpoint pen designed to write on? ______
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2. What was the problem with the ballpoint pens invented between 1888 and 1935? ______
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3. Where did the Biro brothers open their first factory? ______
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4. In what year did the first American Biro pen factory begin production? ______
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5. Why was Reynolds able to copy the Biro brothers' design? ______