László Bíró was a Hungarian newspaperman who noticed that the ink on the presses dried almost the moment it touched paper, and wanted a pen that could do the same. That ink was far too thick to run through a nib, so the pen he patented in 1938 ended in a tiny ball instead, turning in its socket, wetting itself on the way in and laying the ink down on the way out. In Britain his surname became the ordinary word for the thing, a biro, lower case. In Argentina, where he settled and started making them, it is a birome: Bíró, plus the first letters of Meyne, the friend who left Europe with him and went into business beside him. Plenty of inventors end up as a noun. Hardly any get to bring a friend along inside it.