So, I started using the bic four color pen for editing computer programs, back in high school. For GROKKING them as i put it. To get the gist of the whole thing. Did i get it for that purpose or did i have bic pens before that? I can't remember . I might have used one color for variables, another for loops another for hmm.. i don't remember the scheme. But it helped make the order, the pattern in a long stream of computer program statements come alive, when looked at in one gestalt.
After this experience, I always had a BiC 4 color with me, and used it for taking notes in lectures: green for questions, red for statements i disagreed with, black for copying statements of the lectures and blue for my own ideas. i liked this scheme and kept it up for a long time, in taking notes on books or taking notes in books. I use this scheme to this day.
What else can i say about it? It is a cheerful white and sky blue and kind of fat and stubby like a cigar or a bear. it is smooth and fits in the hand in a nice way. not sharp and angled like some other pens or not too thin like smooth round ones. it give me something to play with, clicking the colors.
once a long time ago i had a TWELVE color pen from the American Museum of Natural History gift shop. that one was really fat, and i remember writing with it, the choice of all those colors... cheating i suppose, the color of the writing should come from the tone. It was from Italy.
though in boston i became fond of writing with brown ink, so earthy. i messed with brown and pine green and purple. why not color my world, my productions as do flowers, insects and birds?
The pen is in two plastic parts the lower blue barrel unscrews and you can see the four ink cartridges, softer clear plastic, thin and tipped with a copper point holding a smaller ball. or maybe it is brass. It appears to be in two segments, the one that fits in the plastic cartridge and the other that holds the ball. the ball appears under my hand lens to be steel colored. the cartridge is about 10cm long and one mm inside diameter, 2 mm outside diameter the plastic being about a .5mm thick. the brass tip is 1cm long and fits inside the plastic cartridge, the second portion of the brass tip is about a mm long and wide. the part of the ball that protrudes is only about .5mm wide and .3mm sticking out. i suppose the entire ball inside the brass tip is slightly bigger.
the soft plastic cartridges must be fit back into the upper barrel with a satisfying push, "ka-chunk". Later in this essay we discover why that satisfying "ka-chunk" happens.
the next part is the upper barrel containing many parts. it is white with a black inner part at the bottom which has the four holes or inner barrels that the soft plastic cartridges fit into. the black part has outer screw ridges that the lower hollow blue barrel screws onto. the outer white part has a clip that you can clip it onto your pocket or notebook with and a curious whimsical french ball at the top. fun to hold onto with your teeth.
Inside all this are the 4 plastic triggers black, red, green, blue. Their outer and upper portions appear through, stick out through four windows in the upper barrel. Each has an outer tooth that makes it easy to press down to engage that color ink's cartridge and push its tip out the lower barrel for writing. they are placed against four springs, so that when you push one down it resists. Also so that when you are done with that color and release it, the spring pushes it and the ink cartridge back up into the barrel. they are cleverly shaped to act in concert in the following way:
Each has a little tooth on the lower inside portion. these face each other from the four directions of the square symmetry of the pen. Each also has an upper tooth on the inside. when you push one trigger down against the spring, the upper tooth is pushed below the lower teeth of the remaining three triggers and these catch the upper tooth and hold the engaged trigger down beneath them against the pressure of the spring. this pushes the ink cartridge of the desired color out the bottom of the lower barrel. the triggers have enough play in their movement and the springs supply pressure to work against so that in pushing the single trigger down it can push past the lower teeth but then remain locked below them once they snap back into place.
The next bit of cleverness about the design is that when you push down the trigger of the next desired color while the last trigger is already locked below, pushing the NEW trigger's lower tooth out of the locked pattern makes enough space to release the previous trigger locked below and that trigger's spring pushes it back up to the normal position while the new trigger can then take its place being locked by the next three triggers.
One wonders what kind of earlier mechanism this evolved from or did someone at bic come up with it out of pure genius!
The triggers can be pulled completely out of the barrel through the windows, though this takes some work and almost NEVER happens during normal use. The springs can be pop out with them. The mechanism still works after i've taken one out! nice design. though not as well once i pop out the spring, do the springs push against each other laterally? Two triggers and two springs don't work at all. woops! i tried taking the last trigger out and without all the others to hold it back, its spring popped it across the room. I've lost it.
with everything apart i notice that there is nothing in the upper barrel to catch the ink cartridges. do they insert into the springs? let me see: the black segment of the upper barrel is about 2cm long. it has 4 cylindrical holes into which the cartridges fit. i wonder if the springs fit into these holes too. I wonder if so, whether i can insert them back into them. I cannot tell by looking at another assembled pen. let me try to fit a spring and cartridge back into the emptied pen.
When the triggers are taken out of the pen, one can see two more features below the bottom inner tooth. a third tooth 5mm below that, and a small pin sticking out the bottom. this pin must fit into the hollow of the spring to hold it in place, as the springs must have a tendency to move laterally when under pressure and movement.
So i've gotten one spring back in. and the blue trigger sitting above it. the pin in the trigger keeps the top of the spring from wondering. i've fit a cartridge up the hole in the bottom of the upper barrel. It fits INTO the spring and can catch in the bottom coils of the spring. i should describe the spring. it is coiled tightly at the top and the bottom and loosely in the middle. there are 5 coils tightly adjacent to each other on one end and 4 coils the same way on the other end. now that i have the springs out i don't know which end is the one that engages the cartridge and which the trigger, i'll have to take another pen apart to see. there is then 3 cm of loosely coiled spring, about 10 coils of it. It should be noted that the cartridge has 4 very subtly protruding fins at the end that engages the spring. it can insert into the hollow of the spring but will catch slightly. i suppose it catches more strongly when the spring is inside it's small barrel inside the larger upper barrel.
When you push up on the cartridge inserted into the spring, if only one assembly is in place, and if it catches at the bottom of the spring, it will cause the spring to bow out. obviously the 3 other springs in place prevent this and pehaps THAT behavor effects the pressured spring in a subtle way to make it catch against the cartridge more strongly. let me investigate by putting the whole thing back together.
But one more question: does the lower portion of the spring insert into one of the four inner barrels of the upper barrel? Dammit, i just lost a second spring. An engineer i am not! No, they do NOT insert. With two springs and triggers in place adjacent to each other, not opposite in the barrel i will investigate the mechanism, inserting the cartridges. The cartridges don't seem to catch as they do in the fully functioning pen, they slip right up inside the springs! hmm... AHH... i'm not pushing hard enough! the cartridges don't catch into the springs, you push them THROUGH the springs entirely and they catch onto the lower protruding pin of the trigger which is inserted into the spring! That pin is 4mm long and the bottom last mm is a slightly enlarged ball which fits snugly into the inside of the cartridge engaging it!
So the cartridges are always INSIDE the springs and THIS keeps the springs from bowing out laterally when under pressure. NICE. More detail: From the third pen i pulled a trigger spring assembly out the top before pulling the cartridge out of it from below and the whole trigger - spring - cartridge assembly came out Its window at the top. now i see that the lower 4mm pin of the trigger fits ENTIRELY into the cartridge WHILE the spring is around the cartridge at the top. when the BALL at the bottom of this pin fits into the cartridge it widens it a tad. That's what makes the ink cartridge fit into the upper assembly with its satisfying "ka-chunk"! Furthermore this extra width now is too wide for the spring to fall back down below it and thus helps coordinate the actions of the spring a little, i think, though i don't think there is any room vertically for the spring to slip once this is all together. NICE DESIGN. The cartridges must fit into the springs to ensure the smooth action of the concerted effort of the triggers mutually catching and releasing each other. Indeed, before, when i wasn't sure this mechanism was working with only three triggers in place it might have been that i had removed one of the cartridges. with three entire assemblies in place: trigger, spring, cartridge, the mechanisms works splendidly.
I now notice that the design of the walls of the upper barrel also help hold the upper tooth in place against the lower teeth of the other triggers. In fact, the mechanism works with only TWO complete assemblies in place either adjacent OR opposite. Very nice. It Almost works with ONLY ONE assembly. On further investigation of only two assemblies working together, i realize that what keeps a trigger in the looked down position is that the OUTER upper tooth which also functions to make the trigger easier to push with your finger is the part that actually catches with ridges in the BARREL It is NOT the concerted action of the other three triggers' lower teeth that hold it in place! Even with only one assembly in place, the barrel and spring will guide it to push slightly towards the CENTER of the barrel and then the outer tooth catches against these ridges, locking it into place. The only trouble is that with only ONE assembly the trigger bends TOO far into the barrel and comes out of its TRACKS on the inner surface of the barrel and cannot then be pushed back up. It is the job of at least one other trigger to keep this from happening pushing the locked trigger outward with its lower tooth, so that it remains in its tracks!
The complexity of discovering how this design works has been fascinating! The details of the design mind boggling. Is the design recent enough to be able to interview some of the people involved and trace the roots of it? Surely some of the details of this mechanism where found in previous machines? Or at least the ideas... did they all come full blown from the brow of Zeus, or did the designers chance upon them by recalling UNCONSCIOUSLY previous elements of design they had seen?
I still cannot discern a function for the third lowest tooth. for sure it helps keep the spring from pushing UP past the trigger but i don't see why the tooth needs to be so big. only by shaving one off a little bit at a time might i discern it's full function. it also might function to help keep the trigger from pushing down and getting jammed into one of the 4 inner barrels that the cartridge inserts into.
Finally I have completed the reconstruction of a complete pen out of the parts of two of them. it works fine. a very robust construction!
It is a pity that it is difficult to purchase replacement ink cartridges! usually i run out of blue and black MUCH more quickly than red and green. but the stores usually carry packs of all four color cartridges. that's wasteful. Sometimes one can find a pack of two black or two blue cartridges. most often one can't find them at all. sometimes you do find them but then to one's disappointment that they have dried out! Probably because there is not such a quick turn around in these items and they've been sitting in the store for years!
the white upper barrel also has in relief the logo BiC surrounded by an oval like an ancient egyptian hieroglyphic cartouche, and also an image of a little man. he has a big round dot for a head like the round ball atop the pen. his legs are made of three separate sections each giving an effect reminiscent of the Michelen man. He appears to be brandishing a pen behind him which is nearly as large as himself or perhaps reminiscent of a bayonet.
Some comments on how they write. they write smoothly and easily. the ink flows well and i almost always use the medium point variety which makes a satisfying engagement with the paper while writing. BiC also sells a fine point which comes in an ORANGE lower barrel, but that point is too sharp for me and doesn't make as bold a line and also does not make as SMOOTH an engagement with the paper as i'd like.
On the inks themselves. the black ink is satisfyingly dense. The blue is darker than sky blue, a tad purple, on some batches or when i don't press hard enough it runs a tad light to my taste, i'd prefer if it were denser. Hmm... on this pen, the green is satisfyingly bright and deep enough, usually i find it too thin for my taste. The red, too, is a cheerful strawberry red, but is too light for my taste, i'd like the red to be bolder, deeper, more striking. The inks always flow well. I rarely have to mess around with the ball of the cartridge to get them to flow better.
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