Humankind's use of ink can be traced back 40,000 years beginning with northern Spanish cave paintings created using ink based on manganese dyes, plant sap, and animal blood. In 1950, the Bic Cristal ballpoint pen was created. Bic has produced a package of Cristal Pens that have a variety of colors. The ink from these writing instruments can be analyzed and classified. In order to do so, the ink must be extracted from the pen and placed in an ethanolic solution. An Ocean Optics ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrometer was used to produce absorbance spectra of the various colored inks.
