- published: 26 Dec 2011
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39971 József is a main belt asteroid with an orbital period of 1483.2461782 days (4.06 years).
The asteroid was discovered on April 2, 1998. It was named after the Hungarian poet Attila József.
Bíró László József (surname placed first per Hungarian convention) (Spanish: Ladislao José Biro) (29 September 1899 – 24 November 1985) was the inventor of the modern ballpoint pen.
Bíró (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈbiːroː]) was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1899. He presented the first production of the ball pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931. While working as a journalist in Hungary, he noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. He tried using the same ink in a fountain pen but found that it would not flow into the tip, as it was too viscous. Working with his brother György, a chemist, he developed a new tip consisting of a ball that was free to turn in a socket, and as it turned it would pick up ink from a cartridge and then roll to deposit it on the paper. Bíró patented the invention in Paris in 1938.
In 1943 the brothers moved to Argentina and on 10 June filed another patent, and formed Biro Pens of Argentina (in fact, in Argentina the ball pen is known as birome). This new design was licensed by the British, who produced ballpoint pens for Royal Air Force aircrew, who found they worked much better than fountain pens at high altitude.