--- title: Google Doodle Celebrates the Inventor of the Ballpoint Pen description: Google's latest doodle honors Hungarian inventor Ladislao José Bíro with a nifty animation illustrating how the ballpoint pen works canonical: https://time.com/4512701/google-doodle-ladislao-biro-ballpoint-pen/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-09-29T07:19:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:37:09.429Z og:title: Google Doodle Celebrates the Inventor of the Ballpoint Pen og:description: Ladislao José Bíro was born 117 years ago today og:url: https://time.com/4512701/google-doodle-ladislao-biro-ballpoint-pen/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt63e9845364e69e23/6988a8050b72e39d8d6eb2ae/ladislao-jose-biros-117th-birthday-5067428201496576-hp2x.gif?branch=production&width=782&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 782 og:image:height: 440 og:image:alt: ladislao-jose-biros-117th-birthday-5067428201496576-hp2x og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Google Doodle Celebrates the Inventor of the Ballpoint Pen twitter:description: Ladislao José Bíro was born 117 years ago today twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt63e9845364e69e23/6988a8050b72e39d8d6eb2ae/ladislao-jose-biros-117th-birthday-5067428201496576-hp2x.gif?branch=production&width=782&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Google's New Doodle Celebrates Ladislao José Bíro, Inventor of the Ballpoint Pen > Sponsored content. 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There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=4888cadb-6cdd-4c5e-8625-8599dc7058c4&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Sep 29, 2016 7:19 AM UTC  Google by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Sep 29, 2016 7:19 AM UTC Ladislao José Bíro was [born 117 years ago](https://www.google.com/doodles/ladislao-jose-biros-117th-birthday) today, and while you may not have heard of him before, you’re surely familiar with his most lasting invention: the ballpoint pen. Google’s latest Doodle honors the Hungarian tinkerer, with a nifty animation illustrating how the pen works. Bíro was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1899\. While working as a journalist, he noticed that newspaper ink dried more quickly than the handwritten words pouring out of his fountain pen. Determined to take clean, smudge-free notes, he teamed up with his brother, a chemist, to create the perfect writing apparatus. Together they created a new tip with a tiny ball-bearing, which picked up traces of their unique quick-drying ink as it rolled across a notepad. The Bíro pen was patented in 1938\. The rest is history. The ballpoint pen is still often called a “biro” in [several countries](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/28/who-was-ladislao-jose-biro-how-did-he-invent-the-ballpoint-pen-a/), including the U.K., Ireland, Australia and Italy. In Argentina, where the brothers moved in the 1940s after fleeing the Nazi occupation of Hungary, it is known as a “birome”. 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