The first ballpoint pen was made in 1888 when John Loud, an American leather tanner, patented a roller-ball-tip marking pen. Loud's invention featured a reservoir of ink and a roller ball that applied the thick ink to leather hides.

The next stage of development came almost fifty years after Loud's patent, with an improved version invented in Hungary in 1935 by Ladislas Biro and his brother, Georg. Biro still manufactures pens, and they are so common in parts of Europe that a pen is referred to as a "Biro."

The first pens were invented by the people who also invented paper, the Ancient Egyptians. They used thin reeds (reed pens) dipped in ink to write on papyrus. Reed pens continued to be used until the Middle Ages although they were slowly replaced by quills from about the seventh century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_pen

Quills are made from the long flight feathers of birds with the end cut at an angle to give a sharp point. These are hollow so hold a reasonable amount of ink between each dip in the ink well. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written using quill pens, so they do date back to about 100 BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_pen

Quill pens were used until the nineteenth century when they were replaced with metal nibs. Metal nibs do have much earlier origins, a pen with a bronze nib was found in the ruins of Pompei showing nibs must have been in use in the year 79AD. However, John Mitchell of Birmingham, England started to massproduce pens with metal nibs in 1822. By 1850 the quality of steel nibs had improved and dip pens with metal nibs came into generalized use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nib_%28pen%29

The fountain pen was invented by a Romanian inventor Petrache Poenaru, first patented in 1827. Lewis Edson Waterman, a New York insurance broker invented the capillary feed fountain pen in 1884 producing a much more continuous flow of ink. Waterman still produce high quality fountain pans today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_pen

The ball point pen is usually attributed to the Hungarian Ladislas Biro, as described above.