The Bic pen, a pop culture icon

An object familiar to millions of students and professionals, the ballpoint pen is a twentieth century invention. The Bic Crystal's tungsten carbide ball enclosed in a brass tip and its fixed polypropylene cartridge resting within a hexagonal transparent polystyrene body made it a significant technological achievement. 

This minimalist record-breaker whose performances were first established in 1949 – two kilometres of script for a weight of only 5.8 g, and costing less than half a franc at the time, earned its place in the permanent collections of the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris.
It has become the number one ballpoint pen throughout the world, and over 100 billion pens have been sold worldwide since the 1950s.