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But seriously – it’s kind of amazing that at one time, the ball point pen – considered nothing short of “miraculous” when it first came out – was one of the hottest new technologies you could buy. Invented by Hungarian László Bíró in 1944, it was very quickly reverse-engineered by Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds and offered for sale in the U.S. within months.
According to the Reynolds website:
“The first Reynolds pen debuted in New York on the morning of October 29, 1945. The day the pen went on sale, an estimated 5,000 shoppers stormed the shop, and approximately 50 NYPD officers had to be dispatched for crowd control.”
Time magazine reported that Gimbels in NYC sold 30,000 of the pens (which went for $12.50 each) in the first week.
While most Americans will be hard pressed to find a Reynolds pen to buy, the company is still in existence and is prospering in India.
On this record you hear the voice of Franklin Lamb, President of Reynolds Pen Company. Before he joined Reynolds, Lamb worked as the Advertising Director of Gimbel’s department store. He left Reynolds in 1949, so that helps to date this record to some Christmas between 1946 and 1948.
In this promotional disc, Lamb excitedly tells Reynolds’ retailers about a new promotional initiative that he has cooked up to promote Reynolds Pens – a radio show featuring singer Georgie Price, who by that point had been retired from the entertainment industry and working at a brokerage firm.
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