The first patent on a ballpoint pen was issued on October 30 1888, to John J Loud. In 1938, L¨¢szl¨® B¨ªr¨®, a Hungarian newspaper editor, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to work on designing new types of pens including one with a tiny ball in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. B¨ªr¨® filed a British patent on June 15, 1938. In 1940 the B¨ªr¨® brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne, moved to Argentina fleeing Nazi Germany and on June 10, filed another patent, and formed B¨ªr¨® Pens of Argentina. By the summer of 1943 the first commercial models were available. Erasable ballpoint pens were introduced by Papermate in 1979 when the Erasermate was put on the market.