Reminds me of that old joke (not sure if it's true or not) that NASA spent millions of dollars developing a ballpoint-pen that could work in zero gravity, and the soviets just used a pencil.
This was also after the tragedy of Apollo 1.
Meanwhile Soviets used grease pencils, which while safer, were horrible in usability.
Fischer's private development of space pen was quickly picked up by both US and Soviet space programs to solve the problem of writing in space.