Ladislao José Biro, who is honored in today’s Google Doodle for what would have been his 117th birthday, invented something mundane but transformative: the modern ballpoint pen. Biro (whose ...

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but when Jewish-Hungarian journalist László Bíró invented the ballpoint pen in the 1930s clichéd sayings were probably the last thing on his mind.