The ballpoint was invented in 1935 by Ladislas Bro and his brother Georg. Ladislas Biro was very talented and confident of his abilities, but he had never had a pursuit that kept his interest and earned him a good living. He had studied medicine, art, and hypnotism, and in 1935 he was editing a small newspaper-where he was frustrated by the amount of time he wasted filling fountain pens and cleaning up ink smudges.
Milton Reynolds fifty-four-year-old Chicago salesman became the first American manufacturer to market a ballpoint pen successfully. The first successful ballpoint came on an October morning in 1945. On that first day of sales, Gimbels sold out its entire stock of 10,000 pens-at $12.50 each!
