Documents on Real
HistoryIndex
to the Traditional Enemies of Free
Speech Alphabetical index (text)
Letters to David
Irving on this Website
Douglas
Rodger
knows something, , about the date ballpoint pens came into general use
Ballpoint pens and Anne Frank
I came across the discussion re. the
Anne Frank diary and the date when ballpoint pens might have been available, and remembered coming across references to Biros in
George Orwell‘s correspondence (in The
Complete Works of George Orwell).
The first mention comes in February 1946, when
Orwell wrote to David Low the London booksellers ordering a Biro. They replied that they did not have one in stock, but would supply one when they did.
However, in a letter to a friend dated March 15,
1946, Orwell states ‘I have at last got one of those pens that don’t have any ink in them’ – which
I think must be a Biro – and his next reference to
Biros comes in a letter dated the 12th of December
1947, when he is asking a friend to purchase a Biro for him, stating that his has run out and is being refilled, and that he expects the price of the pen to be about £3.
I realise that the discussion dates from several years ago, and thus may be of little interest now, but thought that I would pass this on.
Alasdair Spark
contributes his two ha’porth on Anne Frank’s
controversial use of ballpoint pens in writing
her diary | a
reader looks at Anne’s curiously varied
handwriting
David
Irving replies:
I have received several letters over the last two years about the date that ballpoint pens (invented by the Hungarian, Biro) first came into general use. A very few were used in 1944 (Sir William Stephenson wrote at least one letter late that year to Lord
Beaverbrook in ballpoint pen; it is in the
Beaverbrook Papers). Anne Frank would not however have had access to one before she died of typhus in 1945.
-
Our
dossier on the Anne Frank diaries -
Alasdair Spark
contributes his two ha’porth on Anne Frank’s
controversial use of ballpoint pens in writing
her diary
Free download of all David Irving’s books Bookmark the download page to find the latest new free books