Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

openculture.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 135 posts

Re: How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

#81

Post by paradox460 »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #50
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever tried writing a few pages with it? It requires too much pressure compared with gel pens, rollerball pens, let alone fountain pens (although the latter are not for everyone). It soon creates fatigue. And at least in my case I also make uglier handwriting with them that with gel pens, rollerball pens, let alone fountain pens. It's an extremely reliable product to do what it does, as well as extremely cheap, but fa…

So true. I hated using BIC ballpoint pens for this reason. I found the Pilot Rollerballs are my favorites to use. The 0.5mm size writes really smoothly. I picked up a couple bolt action pens for some more heft and put the Pilot rollerball fillers into the pen to get a really pleasant writing experience.

I used to put some pilot pens in some Geocaches I maintain. No longer, they always get stolen. It's now pencils cut in half. Used to be Dixon, but I'm looking for a new pencil maker

Re: How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

#82

Post by dole »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

What's the proper name for that other, arguably even more well-recognized, BIC pen, that looks like Cristal except its main body is opaque orange, and is generally cheap garbage that breaks in your hand if you squeeze it it too hard, and doesn't even write half the time? (And yeah, I remember the taste of it, too. I've "eaten" through my share of these pens as a kid. It's the one pen you can't bite on, unless you lik…

BIC lighters are more of a first resort than a last resort.

Re: How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

#83

Post by dehugger »

jwagenet wrote: post #57
lionkor wrote: post #26

I bought a pack of 100 of them for super cheap a few years ago, and a pack of 200 or so pencils with erasers from amazon basics. They carried me through all my exams in university, I have some in every backpack, purse, everywhere. Never had to worry about not having a pen ready, or a replacement if I lost one the morning before the exam. That is truly a buy-it-for-life level investment.

I’m not sure I can get behind buying 100 of a disposable pen as “buy it for life”.

Buy them for life?

Re: How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

#85

Post by lionkor »

jwagenet wrote: post #57
lionkor wrote: post #26

I bought a pack of 100 of them for super cheap a few years ago, and a pack of 200 or so pencils with erasers from amazon basics. They carried me through all my exams in university, I have some in every backpack, purse, everywhere. Never had to worry about not having a pen ready, or a replacement if I lost one the morning before the exam. That is truly a buy-it-for-life level investment.

I’m not sure I can get behind buying 100 of a disposable pen as “buy it for life”.

The box (with its contents) will probably outlast me, and I've only ever thrown away, like, maybe one of them?

Re: How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

#86

Post by ghc »

williamdclt wrote: post #77
Anarch157a wrote: post #29

It's such a versatile product. I bet everyone here who's older than 45/50 have at least once used a Bic pen to rewind a cassete tape. I also used the plastic clip as a stapler remover. There were many other uses for it, for sure.

cassettes were still popular 20y ago, you can probably take 15y off your estimate!

At least in my area, cassettes were still popular 30 years ago during the transition to CDs, but by 20 years ago we were in the midst of the transition from CD to iPod. I don't remember seeing new tapes for sale anywhere after about 2000, and we were definitely burning CDs full of MP3s before then instead of making mixtapes. Personally, I bought my last cassette around 1995. Your point still stands, however...I think cutting 10-15y off the estimate would be reasonable.

Re: How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

#87

Post by TeMPOraL »

dole wrote: post #82
TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

What's the proper name for that other, arguably even more well-recognized, BIC pen, that looks like Cristal except its main body is opaque orange, and is generally cheap garbage that breaks in your hand if you squeeze it it too hard, and doesn't even write half the time? (And yeah, I remember the taste of it, too. I've "eaten" through my share of these pens as a kid. It's the one pen you can't bite on, unless you lik…

BIC lighters are more of a first resort than a last resort.

In the same sense their vacuums, if they made them, wouldn't suck.

Re: How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

#89

Post by ashton314 »

There's an old article from The Atlantic [1] that makes the case that the ballpoint pen killed cursive: they require much more pressure to write with compared to rollerball or fountain pens. Like the author, I started using a fountain pen and it makes so much more sense why you would write in cursive with that thing.

If you like taking analog notes, I highly recommend getting yourself a starter fountain pen and some good paper (emphatically not Moleskin—those work best with pencils; too much bleed with fountain pen ink) and enjoy hand writing as it was meant to be. ;)

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballp...

Re: How the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen became ubiquitous

#90

Post by imtringued »

lionkor wrote: post #26

I bought a pack of 100 of them for super cheap a few years ago, and a pack of 200 or so pencils with erasers from amazon basics. They carried me through all my exams in university, I have some in every backpack, purse, everywhere. Never had to worry about not having a pen ready, or a replacement if I lost one the morning before the exam. That is truly a buy-it-for-life level investment.

I didn't use it for exams, but I once went to a regional clothing store known for being extremely cheap and poor quality and I bought a 1€ mechanical pencil there. Surprisingly, that mechanical pencil had an amazingly well engineered metal collet instead of the usual plastic ones. I've used that pencil for years and my only complaint is that if you don't tighten it enough, it'll unscrew itself and snap your lead.
Post reply on HN