There is a film "Atomic Cafe" that documents this era. You can see why they may have been called "atomic pens" because atomic bombs were new and in the news. I recall many anecdotes about the introduction of ballpoint pens into the postwar world. Bic has sold more than 100 billion ballpoint pens worldwide.Ī ballpoint pen is widely referred to as a "biro" in many countries, including the UK, Ireland, Australia and Italy. In 1945, Marcel Bich bought the patent from Bíró for the pen, which soon became the main product of his BIC company. During World War II, Bíró fled the Nazis with his brother, moving to Argentina, in 1943. Bíró was born to a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1899.īíró presented the first production of the ballpoint pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931. László József Bíró, Hispanicized as Ladislao José Biro, was a Hungarian-Argentine inventor who patented the first commercially successful modern ballpoint pen. Filed by Victor Mair under Language and advertising, Language and technology, Names." Learning to write Chinese characters" (2/11/13)." Learning to write Chinese characters" (7/29/17)." Mechanistic writing of Chinese characters" (9/14/19).In various regional forms of English, ballpoint pens are known as biro (Great Britain), ball pen (Hong Kong, India, and Philippines), or dot pen (Nepal). Calling this new type of writing instrument an "atomic pen" signified that it was innovative, breakthrough, and cutting-edge technology. There are various theories about how the ballpoint pen got its plethora of names in Chinese (see Wikipedia), but the most plausible, or at least widespread, explanation for how it got the "atomic" designation is that the Hong Kong firm that imported the first ballpoint pens styled them "atomic" because that word conveyed high-tech images such as "atomic energy", "atomic bomb", and so forth. More rarely, they are known as "rolling / running bead pens": (chiefly Taiwan, Hong Kong, dated or regional in Mainland China) ballpoint penīallpoint pens are also called "ball / bead pens":
That's what the name is, yuánzǐ guàncháng 原子浣腸 ("atomic enema"), so it's not a translation error or Chinglish.Īs for why it has that peculiar name, I'm not sure, but I think it's for the same reason why some Chinese call ballpoint pens "atomic pens": The results may be skewed by the first form also being used in Japanese. Pronunciation note: I hear 浣 pronounced huàn, wǎn, and huǎn, even guàn, but in the latter case that would normally be written with a different character as guàncháng 灌腸, another word for "enema" Source: " Atomic Enema Gwoyeu Romatzyh", Pinyin News (8/17/22) Medical apparatus and preparation from Taiwan:
0 kommentar(er)
