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Pencil, The: A History of Design and Circumstance
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Pencil, The: A History of Design and Circumstance (1990) (edit title/settings)

by Henry Petroski (Author) (edit contributors)

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Now in paperback, the fascinating, quirky, highly acclaimed book about that indispensable object, the pencil. Petroski traces its origins back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and... read more

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  • “P.06: Artists have long counted the pencil among the tools of their trade, and have even identified with the drawing medium.”
  • “P.23: Edison's pencils, which he ordered in lots of one thousand and always carried in his lower vest pocket, had very soft lead, were thicker than average, and were only about three inches long.”
  • “P.29: Slate pencils were still sold in America in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and some of the more curiously fluted sticks were no doubt preserved because of their pleasing design and the attractiveness of their grey stone that does not show its age.”
  • “P.135: Coloured Conté crayons, on the other hand, like coloured pencils generally, contain wax and are not subjected to the heat that is so important in the creation in the creation of the ceramic lead containing graphite and clay.”
  • “P.161-162: After the necessary research and development, the new pencil was ready to be produced. According to one story, it had already been decided that its colours would be those of the Austro-Hungarian flag, and since the graphite was black, the pencil had to be painted golden yellow, but its suggestion of the Oriental source of the finest graphite also made yellow a brilliant choice. Hardtmuth then needed a distinctive name that would connote quality and value, and hence the pencil was called Koh-I-Noor.”
  • “P.169: Dixon's factory, like all pencil factories, was permeated with the pleasant aroma of cedar, but in Jersey City the caloric value of the shavings was also appreciated.”
  • “P.170: Dixon Crucible is now owned by Dixon Ticonderoga, Inc. a holding company named after its most recognizable product, the yellow-and-green pencil; the corporation's headquarters are in Vero Beach, Florida, with manufacturing facilities in Versailles, Missouri, and elsewhere.”
  • “P.180: While economy pencils will typically have a plain aluminum ferrule, better pencils have distinctively painted ones, historically of brass. A Velvet pencil has a royal-blue band, a Ticonderoga has alternating green and yellow bands, a Mongol has wide black bands at either end of its ferrule. Before the Cold War, the Eagle Pencil Company proudly advertised its Mikado as "The Yellow Pencil with the *Red Band," and a footnote identified the asterisk as signifying that the red band was registered with the U.S. Patent Office, thus claiming it as exclusively Eagle's. Even though renamed Mirado after Pearl Harbor and now made by Berol, this pencil still has the same characteristic red-banded ferrule.”
  • “P.185: The catalogue's best pencils, "Dixon's American Graphite Artists' Pencils," endorsed by "designers, drawing teachers, mechanical engineers, and artists generally," were offered only in the hexagonal shape, for at $9.37 per gross price was apparently no object in finishing them "in the natural colour of cedar wood."”
  • “P.194: The Eagle Pencil Company's drawing pencil was called Turquoise, which described its colour, and it too competed for the quality-pencil business.”
  • “P.205=206: Pencils made of the white and relatively odourless incense cedar, which was a misnomer as far as the pencil industry was concerned, came to be accepted only after the wood was dyed and perfumed to simulate red cedar. Incense cedar to this day is dyed to lend a uniform colour to the wood, and it is also impregnated with wax to act as a lubricant during the pencil-making process. The waxed wood also makes for easier and better sharpening.”
  • “P.218: Artists generally also prefer round pencils, not only because they are comfortable but also because they can be turned and twisted more easily while drawing, thus giving the artist more control over the line. But because a visual artist tends to hold a pencil lightly and more like a brush, the question of its digging into the artist's fingers is often moot.”
  • “P.235: Students taking mechanical drawing courses in the mid- to late 1950s had to outfit themselves, as students had for decades, with 2H, 3H, and 4H pencils, sandpaper pads, erasers, triangles, a T square, a drafting board, and a beginner's drafting set, which could serve for a lifetime.”
  • “P.237: There can be much personal satisfaction in achieving a good new competitive product, but little in making a marginally better one. Thoreau's behaviour is very much in keeping with the typical personality of a creative individual, whether writer or engineer.”
  • “P.261-262: Throughout the twentieth century, manufacturers of drafting pencils have displayed proudly the stubby ends of their products to emphasize how hard it was to part with them.”
  • “P.310: The example of India's crash research program in pencil standardization is the technological equivalent of the biological dictum that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”
  • “P.316: Today's Mongol, Velvet, Mirado, or other quality writing pencil is really beautifully made. It contains a strong piece of lead that takes a fine point and is smooth-writing. The wood is straight-grained and sharpens easily. The pencil is nicely finished with a bright paint job and crisp lettering. The ferrule is neatly decorated and holds the clean eraser straight and firmly. In short, the pencil appears perfect, and it is an object we can admire in the way we might admire a new automobile or a new bridge.”
  • “P.324: Even today, pencil manufacturers see no end to the demand for the classic pencil. If no one else, then temperamental executives and writers like Ernest Hemingway, who reportedly got himself in the mood for writing by sharpening dozens of pencils and then, like Virginia Woolf and Lewis Carroll, sometimes wrote standing up, will never give up their quirks or their quotas.”
  • “P.339-340: The story of the pencil and the industry that produces this small and inexpensive yet powerful and indispensable object is truly the story of a microcosm. It is the story of the familiar thing that we can hold in our hand admire, press against paper and test its mark, twirl about in our fingers and see its seams and its blemishes, break apart if we wish and see at the same time its simplicity and its complexity. The pencil in our hand can be the automobile in our garage, the television in our home, the clothes on our back.”
  • “P.354: While the common seven-inch-long yellow writing pencil may account for the vast majority of all pencils made today, there is no single yellow pencil that is everyone's favourite, and the beauty of a pencil will no doubt always be in the eye and hand of the beholder.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “everything begins with a pencil,” and indeed it is the preferred medium of designers. In one recent study of the nature of the design process, engineers balked when they were asked to record their thought processes with a pen.
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • were commonly thought to be made obsolete when they were improved through evolution.
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • the pencil’s graphite is also the ephemeral medium of thinkers, planners, drafters, architects, and engineers, the medium to be erased, revised, smudged, obliterated, lost—or inked over. Ink, on the other hand, whether in a book or on plans or
    Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
  • like all technological objects, is more likely than not the product of distinctly nonverbal thinking.
    Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
Show all 24 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

Henry David Thoreau seemed to think of everything when he made a list of essential supplies for a twelve-day excursion into the Maine woods.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Henry Petroski (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Knopf
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 1990
ISBN: 0394574222
Page Count: 434

Classification edit see section history

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