[StrictDabbler]

The ballpoint pen was invented in 1889. A simple ballpoint from 1922 was not significantly different than any ordinary pen used today.

I can't think of a major advance in pen design since about 1965 (Fisher pressurized space pen) and I don't expect any major advances before 2065.

Gel inks? Smaller ball-bearings in the Uniball line? Erasable ink? Not much there.

Also anybody who calls a pen their "daily driver" is probably well served by a vintage fountain pen, a form that arguably was at its peak in the early 20th century.

Honestly a pretty bad example.

[Nomentatus]

Was you there Charlie? (That's a radio meme from the 1920's.) My father used fountain pens, good ones, but sooner or later there'd always be a mess. Ballpoint pens weren't practical until quite small ball bearings could be made very, very smooth and spherical. That didn't happen until the mid to late 1960s, when my father finally switched. Before then they were outrageously expensive and gave poor results. They really were very different from the ballpoint pens you can buy today, even if the basic principles are very similar. Mechanical pencils got used a lot, say for drafting, back then. Creating a nearly spherical ball bearing on a planet with gravity, electrostatic effects, noise, etc, etc, out of steel, the most elastic substance known, is no small feat.