The Reynolds Rocket: How a $12.50 Pen Caused a Manhattan Stampede

On October 29, 1945, Gimbel's in Manhattan sold a pen for $12.50 — about $234 today — and thousands of customers nearly trampled each other to get one. TIME reported the scene plainly: shoppers fought to "spend $12.50 each for a new fountain pen." The object of desire was the Reynolds Rocket, America's first mass-market ballpoint.

The pen's inventor wasn't American, and he wasn't first in line for the windfall either. László Bíró, a Hungarian-Argentinian journalist, patented the ballpoint concept: a ball bearing tip instead of a traditional nib, refilled only once every six months, usable at high altitudes. He recruited his brother, a dentist and chemist, to formulate a quick-drying, viscous ink that wouldn't clog. Bíró received his original patent in 1938, but the war intervened; the brothers, who were Jewish, fled Europe in 1941 and landed in Argentina. In 1943 they began selling the pens there under the name "biromes," and the things caught on.

Who actually owned the American market?

That question got messy fast. In 1945, Eversharp and Eberhard Faber paid a half million dollars — roughly $9.4 million today — for the North and Central American rights to Bíró's pen. It was a reasonable purchase, undone by one man's holiday. Milton Reynolds had discovered the pen while visiting Buenos Aires the year before. He rushed home, built his own version, and got it into stores ahead of the license holders.

Gimbel's advertised the Rocket as the "fantastic, atomic era, miraculous pen" — a claim that promised you could write anywhere, for months. The store ordered 50,000 units. After the first week, 30,000 had sold. Another 700 stores placed orders. Reynolds made millions, and reportedly spent some of the profits on a chateau near Versailles, complete with moat. Eversharp and Eberhard Faber grumbled legally. The moat stayed.

Bíró, notably, is not recorded among the millionaires here. The man whose name still means "pen" in Argentina watched others monetize his idea on two continents.

Did the miracle pen actually work?

Not entirely. Some 104,643 defective pens were returned in the first eight months of sales — a figure that suggests the atomic era still had quality-control issues. At those prices, buyers expected permanence; they got leaky prototypes instead.

Nor was Bíró the concept's originator. An American had patented a version of the ballpoint as early as 1888; it never reached market. Bíró's contribution was commercial, not conceptual — he was the first to actually sell the thing.

The pen world had changed for good regardless. Within a few years, Marcel Bich changed it again by making ballpoints disposable and cheap, which is the version that ended up in every desk drawer on earth. The Rocket's brief reign is a reminder that first-mover advantage in retail is real, even when the product fights back — 104,643 times in eight months.