Why were Soviet schoolchildren not allowed to use ballpoint pens? The history of the ballpoint pen, and why it was not allowed in the USSR The appearance of the ballpoint pen in the USSR was a change in writing.
In October 1888, John D. Laud of Massachusetts patented a curious invention. To call it the first ballpoint pen can only be a stretch. It looked more like a marker with a large spinning ball at the end and was used for marking cows and sheep rather than for writing.
The very principle of a ball bathed in ink at one end seemed promising, and over the next 30 years, the US Patent Office issued another 350 patents where this idea was used. However, all the first ballpoint pens were no good. One of the main problems was poor ink, which was highly dependent on temperature. environment. As soon as the temperature dropped below 18 degrees - they froze, and as soon as it rose above 25 degrees - the ink began to flow.
The first more or less successful design of a ballpoint pen was offered to the world in 1938 by the Hungarian brothers Laszlo and Georg Biro. Laszlo was a journalist and drew attention to how quickly printing ink dries. Mixing it with ink, he poured the mixture into a tube. But such a mixture was too thick for a fountain pen, so the pen was replaced with a rotating ball. At first, the Biro pen wrote vertically, until the brothers used a capillary system that allowed the ink to move to the ball, regardless of the position of the pen.
According to legend, in one of the Yugoslav resorts, the president of Argentina, Augusto Yusto, became interested in the invention of Biro. When the second broke World War the brothers agreed to the president's proposal to move to Argentina and begin factory production of new pens. The first batch did not have much success until the British Air Force paid attention to Biro's invention. It turned out that pilots need a pen that writes at any height and rarely recharges! Great Britain buys a patent from Biro. The same patent is acquired by the American company Eversharp, but it turned out to be too late ...
At that time, a patent registered in Argentina or Europe had no effect in the US. This was taken advantage of by an American salesman from Chicago, Milton Reynolds. While in Argentina, he drew attention to the invention of Biro and, returning to the United States, found out that something similar had been patented by the above-mentioned Laud, but this patent had expired. Reynolds copies and patents the Biro pen. And already in 1944 he presented his products to the public in New York. For the presentation, he even hires a champion swimmer, who demonstrates that pens write even under water. The entire presentation lot (10 thousand pieces for 12 dollars 50 cents) was sold on the first day!
Biro's attempts to defend his rights in an American court ended in nothing. Reynolds claimed that his pen was only a smaller copy of the invention of his compatriot Laud.
The excitement around ballpoint pens died down as quickly as it began. They remained just as unreliable and often leaked and smeared. In 1945, Biro sells the patent to another person who wants it - a Frenchman from an impoverished baronial family, Marcel Bish. Bish, together with his friend E. Buffard, rents a production room in the suburbs of Paris and sets the task of creating the best (ballpoint) pen. The starting capital of two enthusiasts was a thousand dollars.
At first, Bish bought all sorts of brands of ballpoint pens and carefully studied them. In addition, during the development of the inventor, an idea struck: since 80% of the cost of the pen fell on the core, would it not be more convenient to produce disposable pens from light and cheap plastic. The idea of disposability was good because pens tend to get lost often and very quickly take on a “shabby” look. At the same time, Bish always said: “A disposable pen should not be semi-usable. She must live her only life with brilliance. As a result of experiments in 1953, the famous Regular hexagonal pen made of transparent plastic was born, which wrote softly and accurately. That's just for advertising purposes, the innovator changed the spelling of his last name "Bish" (Bich) to a simpler and now well-known - "Bik" (Bic). Subsequently, Bic also became famous for the release of disposable lighters and razors.
Competitors to the Bic ballpoint pen, which combined low price and high quality(“cheap and cheerful”), was not observed either in the Old or in the New World. Baron Bish managed to squeeze into the American market only in 1958, when he bought the famous Waterman Pen Company. Until now, Bic controls 70% of the European market and a third of the US market for the sale of ballpoint pens.
Ballpoint pens became widespread in the USSR at the end of the 60s, but for a long time they were not accepted into service with Soviet schoolchildren. At first, the quality of such writing instruments left much to be desired. For a long time in Soviet schools, the use of ballpoint pens was very unfriendly. At first, they were generally forbidden to write, then they were allowed only in the upper grades, when the student's handwriting had already formed. But the main reason for refusing to use ballpoint pens was the struggle for the calligraphic handwriting of a Soviet student. It was believed that since it was impossible to write “with pressure” with a ballpoint pen, then you would not achieve good handwriting.
Until the beginning of the 1970s, schoolchildren in the USSR used pens with "non-spill" inkwells, and later - fountain pens refilled with ink from factory bottles. If the teacher noticed that the text in the notebook was written with a ballpoint pen, he could give the student a “deuce”, as for outstanding work. But you can't stop progress. In the mid-1970s, schools switched entirely to ballpoint pens, which are now praised for their "writing speed" and convenience. History repeats itself...
"The teacher was nervous person. He grabbed my fountain pen and threw it out the window.
Bring your parents,” he said, pushing me out of class.
My crime was serious. I dared to write with an "eternal pen", and this was strictly forbidden. Because fountain pens ruin handwriting.
"Eternal feathers" were then a rarity and were expensive. But I got it myself, making three or four broken ones from the wreckage.
... This is how this story would have ended if twenty-five years later I had not been called to the school to talk about the behavior of my son. And his class teacher told me:
Students are not allowed to write with ballpoint pens. Ballpoint pens ruin handwriting. Let him write with an ordinary fountain pen, like everyone else!
(E. Chukovsky "Eternal Pen")
And what do the experts say They look at the issue deeper. According to Garmash, director of the Moscow School No. 760, Soviet bans on the use of ballpoint pens were designed not only to develop a beautiful handwriting in a child, but to provide optimal conditions for his psychophysical development.
Doctors made conclusions not in favor of ballpoint pens for children younger age: with such a letter, the child experiences a delay in breathing, failure of the heart rhythm. In addition, a junior high school student can continuously write with a ballpoint pen in this mode for up to 20 minutes, which adversely affects his health. When writing with a ballpoint pen, the muscles of the back and abdomen of the student are tense, causing the child's motor skills to suffer. Largely as a result of this forced constraint, many childhood diseases occur, and the educational and cognitive capabilities of children decrease.
Another authoritative specialist in the field of national pedagogy and medicine, doctor of medical sciences, honorary worker, agrees with this. general education V. F. Bazarny. The refusal to use fountain pens in Soviet schools was the wrong decision: these writing instruments are optimally suited for the development of certain skills in a child at school, and moreover, the process of writing with a fountain pen takes place in unison with the psychophysical activity of the student. Firstly, the use of a fountain pen initially correctly “sets” the child’s hand, and secondly, the vital rhythms of the body - brain impulses, heartbeat, respiratory rate, proceed at the same frequency as the process of impulse-press calligraphic writing with such a device.
What pen did you learn to write with?
This pen is half a century old.
Ballpoint pens have been around in the West since before World War II. But they, of course, came to our country with a significant delay. Over the hill they were already switching to pagers and computers, and here, as usual, they tried to invent a bicycle, that is, our Soviet ballpoint pen.
In fairness, it should be noted that doing this simple thing was not so easy. The first attempts were made in 1949, but were not crowned with much success. The balls turned out not to be balls at all, but arbitrary geometric bodies, and ink was a substance with unpredictable properties. Time passed, our scientists puzzled: how could this be? Eisenhower signs "Parkers", and for 5 years we have not been able to create anything worthy! Our homeland was saved by another Kulibin, who proposed an original chemical formula, to which Western scientists have not thought of: castor oil + rosin = ink. God knows what formula, but not bad either. In general, by 1965 things were going well, and ballpoint pens began to be produced more or less in large quantities, using Swiss equipment.
During these years, special pens were developed for writing in zero gravity, with which astronauts wrote on spaceships"SOYUZ-3" and "SOYUZ-4", the first domestic felt-tip pens, special writing units (pyrographs) for the recording equipment of power plants were developed.
The principle of operation of a ballpoint pen is very simple. The channel through which the ink passes is blocked at the end by a metal ball, which must be wetted with ink. A small gap between the ball and the walls allows it to rotate and leave a mark on the paper.
Nowadays, the principle of a ballpoint pen is used in other devices - for example, in a roll-on deodorant or a tube of glue.
In the journal "Science and Life", the section "Little Tricks" gave advice on how to repair ballpoint pens.
For example, Treatment of a soiling rod.
After repeated refueling of the ballpoint pen core, the gap between the edges of the core and the ball increases and the pen begins to write worse - it gets dirty. This defect will disappear if the end of the rod is compressed. The simplest "crimp" can be a pushpin stuck in a tree. Place the end of the tilted rod in the corner of the button cutout and rotate it with light pressure
Storing ballpoint pen refills.
A stock of ballpoint pen refills can be stored for years in a tightly stoppered test tube without fear that the paste will dry out. If dried rods are placed in a test tube with fresh rods, they will soon restore their properties.
Once upon a time, we “treated” a pen like this: we dismantled it, took the rod and ripped the pen straight with our teeth, carefully blew into the rod, put the pen back into the rod, assembled the pen and continued to write. Ink marks remained in the corner of the mouth. I don't remember anyone getting poisoned by them.
In the funds of the 5th channel there is a wonderful short video about the first ballpoint pens in the USSR. I highly recommend watching it, it helps to feel the atmosphere that prevailed in those years in the industry of ballpoint pens.
Says and shows Petersburg Original »
It is believed that when ballpoint pens became public, they were forbidden to write in schools. What is the logic here is not entirely clear. Maybe there was even more blot from them than from fountain pens, maybe “the handwriting was losing its individuality,” or maybe some other misfortune. But it was, it was - not for us to judge. New pens began to be used en masse around 1970.
To my question, dad replied that he wrote with a ballpoint pen in high school - this was in the late 60s. Haven't heard of a ban. First-graders did not write with a ballpoint pen, because such pens were not often on sale, at least in Ryazan. They cost 2 rubles - not cheap at that time. For a first grader, this is a luxury.
Then there was the subject - calligraphy or "writing". Learned to draw letters with a pen. When in the first grades they were taught to write with fountain pens, they did it for a reason, but with the aim of putting their hand in the right place. After all, if the fountain pen is held incorrectly, then it simply will not write.
They taught to write with the so-called "simple pen": a wooden round painted stick with a metal clip at one end, into which a steel pen was inserted, and the pen was dipped into the inkwell.
It was necessary to monitor not only the correctness of the outline of the letter, but also the pressure of the pen in one or another part of the line: the thickness of the line depended on it. There were special notebooks "pre-filled" in a typographical way - copybooks, and they left a place for writing in one's own achievements in calligraphy, and exercises were done in ordinary notebooks in an oblique ruler. In copybooks, they wrote the entire first quarter, and only then we were prescribed notebooks in an oblique ruler.
There were also mysterious non-spill inkwells. I could not understand why the "non-spill" ones, if they were not closed by anything. Some kind of ink will spill through the hole and stain everything around! And they were also worn in knapsacks. I found a video.
Until the turn of the 70-80s at post offices, in savings banks and in passport offices on tables for filling out forms Soviet people government simple fountain pens and inkwells were waiting. AT last time I saw them at the Ryazan post office in the first half of the 80s .. I tried to write on paper with them - it got dirty.
AT recent times It is said that it is better for children to learn to write with fountain pens. Why? There is such a theory - when using a pen, the hand is subjected to less stress. Everyone who has used a pen notes that there is practically no tension in the hand and wrist after a long continuous writing. In order for the paste of a ballpoint pen to leave a trace on paper, you have to make an effort, put pressure on the pen, as a result, you want to get rid of "scribbling" as an extremely tedious task as soon as possible. The pen, in turn, leaves a smooth and clear stroke on the paper, even with a light touch on the paper.
Svetagor in her blog cited an excerpt from the Internet, how someone's son learned to write. He wrote clumsily with a ballpoint pen, like any first-grader. But he studied at a German school, and there is such a rule - for the first two years, students write with a pencil, and for the rest of the eleven years of study, without fail, with a fountain pen. No one ever uses a fountain pen after finishing school. The father decided to find out why children should learn to write with a fuller (in German - with a fountain pen). As if involuntarily, children get used to write beautifully.
Forefinger bends strongly.
The fingers are more relaxed.
The main advantage of a fountain pen is pressure sensitivity. Press more - the line is thicker. Slightly let go - the line turned out to be thin. A fountain pen feels even a slight pressure (whereas with a ballpoint pen, with such a weak pressure, writing simply would not work). What does it mean? This means that when writing with a fountain pen, you can change the pressing force. We lead the line down - pressing more. We lead the line up - pressing less. At the same time, our hand either tenses or relaxes. Relaxation releases tension.
Lines, letters, numbers written with a pen are smoother than if we wrote with a ballpoint pen. When writing slowly with a ballpoint pen (and all children begin with slow writing), some bumps, tubercles, lines "tremble" appear.
The disadvantages of a fountain pen include difficulty in handling. For example, the ink can dry out and it takes time to write on the pen. Also, the letter may be sloppy due to the fact that the pen is leaking. You can inadvertently "smear" the line just drawn, or the ink can spread due to poor quality paper.
How did you write with a fountain pen in school? The history of pens is inseparable from the history of human civilization itself. We can say that the first pens are the same age as the first writing. Inventing cuneiform writing, the inhabitants of Ancient Babylon also invented the first pens - pebbles, with which they squeezed signs on soft clay. In the ancient world, wax tablets were used, the handles for which were sharp sticks made of bone or copper. Of the ancient writing instruments, the brush invented in China is closest to the pen of our days. Ancient Chinese brushes were made from camel or rat hair. For writing, ink was used, which included soot, pine resin, lamp oil and gelatin obtained from donkey skin. Somewhat later, ink was invented in Europe, which has the ability to maintain its brightness for hundreds of years. For the preparation of such ink, various iron salts and the so-called ink nuts, which are growths on the bark of trees, were taken. The first European pen to write with ink is a thin, pointed stalk of bamboo or reed. Pens based on bird feathers appeared only in the 8th century AD. Feathers were much more convenient for writing than cane sticks, but the manufacture of "fountain" pens took a lot of time and effort. Feathers were taken only from young healthy geese and only in spring. The feathers were then fired in hot sand to dry and harden. Further, the tips of the feathers were sharpened with knives, which were called penknives. Russia was one of the largest producers of writing pens in the world. So in the UK alone Russian empire exported 27,000,000 feathers annually. Throughout the 19th century, engineers pondered how to create a pen that would not need to be constantly dipped in ink. And finally, in 1884, a fountain pen was born, which included a special ink reservoir connected to the pen with grooves. The grooves fed the ink to the pen, which was equipped with a round hole in the middle, which made it possible to reduce the number of blots. In 1938 were invented ballpoint pens. It all started with the fact that a journalist from Hungary, Ladislo Biro, drew attention to the fact that newspaper ink dries much faster than usual. However, newspaper ink could not be used for pens due to its excessive density. Then Biro decided to improve the pen in such a way that it became suitable for writing with very thick ink. Ladislo Biro created a tube pen, at the end of which a miniature ball was placed. This is how ballpoint pens were born. The essence of the mechanism of a ballpoint pen is that at the moment when the ball moves along the paper, it rotates and captures the thick ink in the rod. Even the very first ballpoint pens had the ability to leave a mark six kilometers long. Entrepreneurs from England became interested in Biro's invention, and they bought a patent for the production of ballpoint pens from him, adapting them to the needs of aviation. Despite the fact that it was Biro who invented the ballpoint pen, the world remembers another person more - George Stafford Parker, who worked as a pen sales agent. Customers often complained to Parker about the quality of the goods he sold. Parker did not like this very much, and he decided to make his own pen, which could no longer cause any complaints. Parker was successful, and very soon he opened his own production of ballpoint pens. In addition to writing instruments, in the site store you can buy Casio watches, reviews of which confirm the ideal ratio of price and quality of these watches, as well as Tissot Swiss watches. In the Soviet Union, the first ballpoint pens appeared after the Great patriotic war. The Soviet government asked Mr. Parker to organize the production of pens on the territory of the Union. The choice of Parker was determined by the fact that the pen "parker" was in the hands of General Eisenhower when he signed the act of surrender of Nazi Germany. Parker did not want to cooperate with Stalin, and the Soviet engineers had to do everything themselves. As an ink, Soviet specialists decided to use a mixture, which in those days was customary to fight flies - a mixture of rosin and castor oil. In 1949, the production of Soviet ballpoint pens was launched. For a long time, ballpoint pens were quite an expensive commodity. Prices dropped in 1958 when a French entrepreneur named Bic created a new type of BIC disposable ballpoint pen. Pens were cheap, easy to use, reliable enough and able to write on almost all types of paper. With the advent of BIC pens, ballpoint pens have become a mass commodity. Today, ballpoint pens are produced in the world with ink of all colors of the rainbow. At the same time, black is still the favorite color. This is followed by blue, and only then red with green.
In Soviet schools, everything was not quite the same as in modern ones. For example, children were forbidden to use ballpoint pens. This was done not just like that and not on someone's evil whim.
However, all this is far from the only thing that will seem modern people rather strange in the system of the then education.
1. No handles
Calligraphy in the Soviet school
Until the early 1970s, in the schools of the USSR in primary school It was forbidden to write with ballpoint pens. Instead, children used fountain pens. This was done to develop a beautiful, legible handwriting. Schools even had special calligraphy lessons - calligraphy. However, already in 1968 the situation began to change. Volume school curriculum constantly grew, and therefore calligraphy and "feathers" were abandoned in favor of more important items. However, calligraphy remained as a 5-minute exercise within the language lessons.
2. Knowledge Day
In fact, the "Day of Knowledge" appeared quite recently. This happened only in 1980, after the corresponding decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and specifically - decree No. 3018-X “On festive and memorable days". After that, September 1 became a solemn, but not a holiday or a day off. Knowledge Day was designated as a holiday only in 1984.
3. Bell
The bell as the main symbol of the beginning of classes began to be used precisely in Soviet times. As you might guess, the school bell symbolizes the bell. At first, they used it only on September 1, but later they began to ring the bell on the last day of school, before the holidays. Despite the fact that the "Knowledge Day" appeared only in the 1980s, the first day of school was previously accompanied by solemn and musical events. Bringing flowers to teachers is also one of the oldest Soviet traditions.
4. School chic
From September 1, all students had to go strictly in school uniform (only to classes). Schools were pretty strict about appearance students up to Perestroika. Boys were required to wear white shirts and formal trousers, while girls wore skirts (the length of which was also monitored) and white aprons. One of the few things that was not regulated in any way were bows for girls. Anyone could tie. The ability to make a huge "rose" of white chiffon was considered a special chic.
When did they appear in the Soviet Union
Ballpoint pens became widespread in the USSR at the end of the 60s, but for a long time they were not accepted into service with Soviet schoolchildren. At first, the quality of such writing instruments left much to be desired. But the main reason for refusing to use ballpoint pens was the struggle for the calligraphic handwriting of a Soviet student.
Until the mid-70s, schoolchildren in the USSR used pens with inkwells - "non-spill" and later - fountain pens refilled with ink from factory bottles. If the teacher noticed that the text in the notebook was written with a ballpoint pen, he could give the student a “two”, as for outstanding work.
What are the disadvantages of a ballpoint pen
According to Garmash, director of the Moscow School No. 760, Soviet bans on the use of ballpoint pens were designed not only and not so much to develop a beautiful handwriting in a child, but to provide optimal conditions for his psychophysical development.
Vladimir Yuryevich refers to the opinions of physicians who drew conclusions not in favor of ballpoint pens for young children: with such a letter, the child experiences a delay in breathing, a failure of the heart rhythm. In addition, a junior high school student can continuously write with a ballpoint pen in this mode for up to 20 minutes, which adversely affects his health.
When writing with a ballpoint pen, the muscles of the back and abdomen of the student are tense, causing the child's motor skills to suffer. Largely as a result of this forced constraint, many childhood diseases occur, and the educational and cognitive capabilities of children decrease.
Pen pros
Another authoritative specialist in the field of pedagogy and medicine, doctor of medical sciences, honorary worker of general education, VF Bazarny agrees with Vladimir Yuryevich. Vladimir Filippovich is convinced that the refusal to use fountain pens in Soviet schools was the wrong decision: these writing instruments are optimally suited for the development of certain skills in a child at school, and moreover, the process of writing with a fountain pen goes in unison with the psychophysical activity of the student.
Firstly, the use of a fountain pen initially correctly "sets" the child's hand, and secondly, the vital rhythms of the body - brain impulses, heartbeat, respiratory rate, proceed at the same frequency as the process of impulse-press calligraphic writing with such a device, Bazarny believes. .
Such a letter, according to the scientist, eventually contributes to the development of a child's motor automatism, consistent with the nature of endogenous biorhythms. Bazarny is convinced that it is enough to use fountain pens during the first years of study - then the necessary, correct writing rhythm will be retained by a person when writing with other accessories.
Teachers from the Balashikha zemstvo gymnasium, where students use fountain pens, say that children use them to write more competently and deliberately. The child performs the task more calmly, because the frequency of pressing the pen coincides with the heart rate. Moreover, it is easier to write with a fountain pen than with a ballpoint one: you do not need to press so hard on the paper.
Which countries write with fountain pens
At the state level, primary school is required to use fountain pens in Ukraine, in Germany. Last year, the Association of Parents' Committees and Communities addressed an open letter to the President of Russia, the Minister of Education and other authorized persons, asking them to support the system of education and national patriotic education children "Russian classical school".
The project, in particular, provides for a return to many positive teaching methods and tools in educational institutions used in the USSR. There is also a clause in it about the mandatory use of fountain pens instead of ballpoint pens in the lower grades.