New Delhi Making and breaking records come naturally to Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury. At 35, he has already been setting world records for past 10 years. “I like to do something creative each day and test myself,” he says. With two Guinness world records to his name, one in 2006 for memorising 14 names with birth dates in less than two minutes and the other in 2007 for performing 198 push-ups in a minute, Chowdhury will soon feature in a Guinness World Record publication with a third record under his belt.
He has created the world’s largest pen that weighs 10 kg and is 12 feet long. On Sunday, he displayed this pen before the media and onlookers and even scribbled with it. “Earlier, this record was held by Olaf Fuguer from Sachsen, Germany who made a 10 feet x 11 inch pen weighing 8 kg in 2005. When I saw this record while leafing through the 2009 edition of the Guinness World Records, I was impressed and determined to break it,” he says. Chowdhury then applied to Guinness to confirm whether anyone had successfully attempted to break the record set in 2005.
After receiving the green signal from Guinness, Chowdhury began working on the pen. The ballpoint pen is made up of a combination of 60 per cent steel and rest plastic to give it stability. The inner layer has been coated with plastic while the outer layer is made of steel. With his crew of 25 people working round-the-clock, Chowdhury used his expertise as a production engineer to get over minor hassles.
“We encountered difficulty in filling the pen with ink because each time we tried, the ink would spill over. So I had to make slight adjustments in design,” he explains, mentioning that one of the conditions for the record is that it should work.
Initially, the pen weighed 50 kg and this was causing a problem. Each time he attempted to write, the ball pen punched through paper. After a few tweaks, the weight was lowered to 10 kg and in a span of five months, the pen was complete.
Chowdhury again reconfirmed with Guinness whether the record set in 2005 still stood. “When they told me nobody else had attempted to break the record, I was elated. This was going to be my third Guinness record,” he says.
Chowdhury has also made a special 2X2 ft iron stand and a rexin cover for the pen. “I wanted to give it the look of an ordinary pen with a stand and pen cover.”
Before one enters the Guinness World Records, there is a procedure one must follow. Each candidate has to bring out a public notice about the record and then display the record attempt before journalists and government officials. The video and print coverage has to be sent to Guinness and after verification Guinness enters the candidate’s name in the books.
“I have the official certificate from Guinness allowing me to display my record. Now I will send the video footage to them. And by 2010 they will add my name to their record book,” he says, already thinking of his next record attempt.
