László Bíró, a Hungarian, was the father of one of the 20th century’s most successful inventions—ballpoint pen. He worked in medicine, oil industry, motor racing and painting. It was when he was a newspaper editor that he became disappointed by the nibs (metal points) of pens which leaked ink and tore paper. One day, he was in a Budapest printing shop and saw an ink that dried as soon as it touched paper. “It got me thinking how this process could be simplified right down to the level of an ordinary pen,” he recalled later.

The quick-drying ink used in printing was too thick to flow from a fountain pen, so Bíró’s brother, George, who is an expert in chemistry, came up with a new design. After several years of experiments, Biro replaced the pen’s metal writing nib with the new design bearing a tiny ball in its tip with the help of his brother. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rolled, picking up ink from the ink container and putting it smoothly on the paper.

Bíró sold his patent (专利) to Baron Marcel Bich of France for 2 million dollars. In 1950 Bich produced his own cheap, disposable (一次性的) ballpoint pen. It was sold throughout the market and in 1965 the French government allowed it to be used in schools, with other countries following suit, such as Argentina. Before long, the ballpoint was becoming an increasingly popular piece of stationery (文具). Today, around 15 million ballpoint pens are sold worldwide every day. People will always remember Biro for his invention. Today in many English-speaking countries, people still use the word “biro” to refer to any kind of ballpoint pen Millions of people use it all over the world every day.

Bíró used to hear people say the ballpoint was ruining writing skills. He would smile and say, “Well, writing comes from the heart. If we can help the hand to perform the task, what is so wrong with that?”

Fonts(字体)are used to make letters look a certain way on computers or in books and magazines. If you’re writing a report, you can give a different look to the words in your report by choosing a different font. For example, you can make them look like handwriting or the lettering in a comic(漫画)book. Some fonts even make the letters look like funny shapes or drawings.

Scientists have discovered that people often remember things better if it is a little bit harder for them to read. The scientists have learned that if you are reading words that are difficult to recognize, your brain has to work a little bit harder to make sense of the words that your eyes are seeing. This extra work helps your brain remember what you are reading better.

Now professors at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have taken this idea and created a font just for remembering things. The font, called Sans Forgetica, is a little bit hard to read on purpose.

There are two main things that make it hard to read. Probably the most obvious one is that all of the letters have gaps or holes in them. When the letters have these gaps, the brain has to fill in the gaps to recognize them. This makes readers slow down and contemplate as they read.

The other surprising thing about Sans Forgetica is that it slants (倾斜) backwards. You may be used to seeing words that slant toward the right. But Sans Forgetica slants the other way, which looks very unusual.

When someone creates a new font, they often sell it. But RMIT is giving away their font for free, hoping that it will quickly help students and other people who need to remember things while they’re reading. Sans Forgetica, which RMIT is calling “the font to remember”, can be downloaded at the university website.