BICis the most popular brand of disposable pens. The authorship of the inventionbelongs to people that have no relation to BIC Company. Laszlo and George Biro,the Hungarian brothers, patented their invention in 1938. Being a journalist,Laszlo Biro noticed that the ink that is used for printing newspapers driesquicker than the ink from a fountain pen.
Laszlo came to an idea to develop apen that would use same ink, which would make it more practical. The problemwas that the ink that was used in printing newspapers was too thick, and itcould not flow through the fountain pen. Because of that, Laszlo and Georgedecided to change the construction of a pen by adding a tiny metal ball to thepoint of a pen.
Thus, moving such pen, paper forced the metal ball to rotateand to pick up ink from the reservoir inside. In such a way, the ink wasdelivered on paper. MarcelBich was not among those people who came up with the idea of the creation ofsuch a pen but he popularized those pens. Popularizing of the new product wasnot the only innovation Bich achieved because along with ballpoint pens heintroduced the new principle of life that signalized about the forthcoming ofconsumerism. The new principle was disposability, and all of the nextproduction of BIC, including razors and cigarette lighters, followed the sameprinciple. All of them were disposable. Concerningthe pen, its handle was made of the transparent plastic, which was unusual forthat time, and the word “Crystal” derives from this characteristic.
The brandname is a shortened version of the family name of the inventor with omitted”h”.Themost important advantage of BIC Crystal was its low price. It could be thrownout, and buying a new one was not expensive. However, especially for the neatand the miser, it was possible to replace only the rod saving on the handle.This predetermined the popularity of the novelty, which took only a few yearsto conquer Europe and radically change the world. Marcel Bich was the first tooffer mankind disposable items, first of which was a ballpoint pen, second – alighter, and third – a razor. After that, disposable items flooded the world.
Interestingly,Bich’s first pen cost only 29 cents. According to the calculations of theentrepreneur, he needed to sell ten thousand disposable pens a day to pay backthe costs. Marcel even did not expect that in two years the sales of his penswould reach quarter million per day. The product of BIC was a combination ofsimplicity, reliability, and cheapness.
The company always claimed to find thestraight solutions for everyday tasks that the average people deal with: “Whenfaced with complexity, we respond with clarity.” The loyalty of the customerswas guaranteed by the unchanging quality of the product. In particular, BIC penis claimed to write two kilometers, and the length stays unchanged from themoment of emergence of these pens till now.
Theaudience of the BIC is defined by the company as ” for everyone, everywhere:write in many colors, highlight, draw, color in, correct, produce a flame orshave… with BIC products, everyone in the world is sure to find what they need,at an affordable price, offering both quality and reliability. In addition, BICproducts are available to consumers worldwide in more than four million retailoutlets, from open-air pushcarts to large retailers.”EastmanKodak Company is an American company, the manufacturer of photographicmaterials, equipment, supplies, and software for offset, digital, andfunctional printing. The company was founded by George Eastman in 1881 whoseinitial interest was the development of camera roll. The process of photographyat the end of the 19th century remained extremely difficult. First of all, itwas necessary to manually dilute the liquid photosensitive emulsion. Secondly,in complete darkness, the photographer applied the emulsion to the glass plate,then made a shot, and it was necessary to do this before the emulsion dries.
George did not like such a laborious technology, and right in his own kitchenfor many years by numerous experiments, he was creating a brome-gelatinemulsion recipe, which could be applied to the plates in advance as it remainedsensitive to light after drying. Soon, Eastman simplified this process byinventing the composition of a dry emulsion, which was not covered with brittleand heavy glass, but with a flexible and light celluloid film, the prototype ofmodern film. This invention was the first of those patented by the futuremillionaire.Inorder to make photography a true mass activity, the consumer needed to beoffered not only a convenient photosensitive material but also an easy-to-usedevice that would be ideally suited for this material. The first camera of hisdesign George patented in 1886 but its mechanism was not entirely successfuldue to a poorly triggered loud “shutter-alligator.” Continuing toimprove the design, on September 4, 1888, Eastman registered the name”Kodak” as a trademark. Soon, his design office presented the firstamateur portable camera Kodak number 1 to the public. The size of the devicewas smaller than the shoe box – a little over 6 inches in length, 3.
5 inches inwidth and less than 4 inches in height. Outwardly, it looked like a small box,for which he was nicknamed the “detective camera” among the people.Thesmall body of the camera had no levers, wheels or disk regulators as well asadditional screens, with which modern devices abound. Streamlined forms of thebrown box are violated only by two light brown buttons, one of which was therelease of the shutter and another was the mechanical rewinding of the film. Atthat time it was necessary to manually twist each shot.
The camera was so easyto use and primitive that this model was destined for the popularity among theAmerican users. Advertisement of the camera was held under the catchy slogan”NO SETTINGS!”Simplicityand convenience in use as well as a fairly modest price, which was just under$5, made this camera affordable and attractive for all amateur photographersand even children. However, it is not surprising because of the fact thatGeorge Eastman in 1888 made a memorable expression “You press the button -we do the rest” the motto of his company.
Following this slogan not onlyprovided Eastman and his followers with considerable prosperity but also madeit possible the first public art to emerge, and this art, the art of photographquickly gained worldwide popularity.Thefirst camera of the legendary Kodak Brownie series appeared back in 1900. Thedevice was externally a small brown box with a minimum of settings made ofpressed cardboard, pasted with leatherette. The model was incredibly in demandin the market; different variants of the “brown box” were on sale foralmost 70 years – until the end of the 1960s, turning the photo into a trulymassive hobby. The phenomenon of this popularity is explained by the samereasons for incredible cheapness and equally incredible ease of use.
In 1900,the camera cost only $1, which is about $26 at current prices.Browniecameras were originally designed for children. The name “brownies”means tiny harmful, but soft-hearted fairy men, invented by Canadian writerPalmer Cox. However, this device was willingly bought by adults who wereseriously interested in photography.
Thus, it is not surprising that this isthe series of Kodak cameras that owns a world record of ten million units soldin only one five-year period from 1957 to 1962. Brownie cameras were constantlyimproving, and new models were produced in incredible quantities and dozens ofvarieties.
