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My favourite thing about Bic's origins:

> Marcel Bich bought the patent for the ballpoint pen from Hungarian – Argentine inventor László Bíró

Presumably beating his rivals John Pencil and Wolfgang von Fountain-Pen to it...

I remember a skit in a (terrible) British sketch show a zillion years ago where Biro tells the details of his secret invention to someone with an aside that there was nobody else in the house except "the butler Bic, the housekeeper Pentel, and the chauffeur Platignum" :)

the word "biro" didn't exist until Biro invented the ballpoint pen, which came to be known after its inventor

Not in English, but the word bíró means judge in Hungarian language. The earliest written memory of the word is from the year 1306, from a land ownership certificate issued that year.

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