Writing

This month marks 80 years since one of the most influential yet underrated inventions burst onto the market in New York on October 29, 1945. The Biro may seem unremarkable, but it fast became part of our everyday lives and revolutionized communications.

How are you using new AI technology? Surely you're only deploying things like ChatGPT to summarize long texts or draft up mindless emails. But what are you losing by taking these shortcuts? And is this tech taking away our ability to think?

Gadget freaks don't just like multitools – they're also big on fancy pens. If you're one of those folks, you might want to check out the titanium-bodied Dragon Pearl. The refillable ballpoint pen is warrantied for 100 years and a million clicks.

A clever team out to "turn unconventional ideas into practical and unique products" has crafted a lightweight, slimline notebook that lets you write, erase and write again, bridging the gap between traditional paper pads and digital note-taking apps.

This is quite possibly the most over-engineered pen of all time, and it looks like it's straight out of a spycraft lab. The Hancept Zero Mk2 is a 2-mm-thick contraption that can slip into a credit card slot, and magically fold into a hexagonal pen.

Marlboro & Kane from London has a thing for shrinking tools down to the smallest size possible while still making them functional. The company's latest mini marvel lets you have a pen – and a bit more functionality – always at hand.

If you want to concentrate on your writing, you probably shouldn't be using a computer that's connected to the distracting internet or that's always sending alerts. That's where the BYOK comes in, as it doesn't let you do anything other than write.

For many people, taking notes using a pen and paper will always be easier and more intuitive than typing. The Nuwa Pen allows them to keep doing so, but it also digitizes what they've written for subsequent sharing and searchability.

To aid research into the history of human writing, DeepMind has now turned its AI technology to the task of restoring incomplete ancient texts, where it has performed with an impressive degree of accuracy.

While it would be great if teachers could spend lots of time with each of their students, the fact is that children often end up doing most of their handwriting exercises unsupervised. A new system may help address that problem, using a "smart" pen.

In 1945, the first successful ballpoint pen went on sale in the United States and Britain. Initially seen as an expensive novelty, the Biro soon went on to become not only a part of our everyday lives, but one that revolutionized how we communicate.

Melding the worlds of art and computer science, two Danish artists have developed a fascinating AI project called Booksby.ai, an online bookshop generated by AI - from the books and covers, to the reviews and pictures of people reviewing the books.