That was before fountain pens became almost exclusively hobbyist. Also, Americans don't say "biro"— that's something that I've only heard from English people or people from Commonwealth countries. Yanks would probably just say "ballpoint."

'Ballpoint' was the term used in the first patent for such a device. Later, the name 'biro' was coined from the name of László Bíró, who created the first commercially successful ball point pen. Finally, there is of course the famous company Bic, which was named by its founder Marcel Bich after himself.

I would say that in my experience as a British person, 'ballpoint' is used frequently, 'biro' is probably the most common and has an almost colloquial feel to it, and 'bic biro' is used to refer to specifically to ones made by Bic, where people are usually imagining something like the Bic Cristal as a sort of 'standard' pen.

Fascinating. I've never heard anyone say "Bic biro" but I don't doubt it's in usage somewhere.

I do know Americans that colloquially use "bic pen" as their preference for "ballpoint pen", but that's partly pressure from the other direction of the genericization that they associate "bic" alone more with lighter. So "a bic" is a lighter and "a bic pen" is a ballpoint pen.

We would mostly just say “pen.” If we had to specify, it would be “ballpoint pen,” including the “pen.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard “ballpoint” used as a noun. It would be like saying “fountain” for “fountain pen.”