Nasa's Zero gravity pen

Came across this interesting piece of information today.


"When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered the ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and Million dollars to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300C.

Russians were faced with the same problem and they used a pencil."

Did a subsequent search and found the following article which claims
that the pen was developed by Paul Fisher and not by NASA.

http://space.about.com/od/spaceexplorationhistory/a/spacepen.htm

Irresepective of who spent the money I think this is a good example to illustrate that the Costliest solution is not necessarily the best!