There's this Cold War story I heard. It's said that at the beginning of the Space Race, both the Americans and the Russians bumped into a bit of a nuisance. You can't use pens in Space. They depend on ink flowing downwards. So the Americans comissioned a research team to invent a pen that would work even in 0G, and soon enough they had built a clever system for pumping the ink and, after some effort, created a working prototype.
The Russians used a pencil.
