Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be exploring the
Speaker 1: invention of the pencil. Yes, like, like most of you,
Speaker 1: we grew up with pencils, the good old fashioned wooden variety.
Speaker 1: But of course you know the whole exercise of having
Speaker 1: to keep the you know, keep them sharpened, dealing with brakes,
Speaker 1: dealing with oh I always hey when they when the
Speaker 1: eraser either rubs off or falls out, and then you
Speaker 1: go to erase something and you just get that heart
Speaker 1: like I'm getting the chills even thinking about it, of
Speaker 1: the metal, of the of an eraserless pencil scraping against
Speaker 1: your text. Or Another thing I hate is when you
Speaker 1: get like an older pencil out of your grandmother's writing
Speaker 1: desk and it has one of those petrified erasers that
Speaker 1: does nothing, and you start chewing on it, only to
Speaker 1: realize it has lead paint. Well I'm that chewing on
Speaker 1: them is another issue altogether, But but I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: eventually being done, feeling done with the old fashioned wooden pencil,
Speaker 1: and then I embraced the mechanical pencil instead. Wait wait, wait,
Speaker 1: you mean done, like I'm never going to use a
Speaker 1: wooden pencil again. Basically, yeah, it's like what mechanical pencils exist?
Speaker 1: Goodbye wooden pencil I'm done with you and sharp to
Speaker 1: pencils just no more, basically. And you know, also I
Speaker 1: think at the time, being you know, essentially still a child,
Speaker 1: like there was the gadget try of it right, Suddenly
Speaker 1: oh I there's this plastic cylinder or I remember the
Speaker 1: fancy ones. We had to like load the little uh
Speaker 1: purchased lead um into the back of the pencil, and
Speaker 1: you know, and then you're having to click it to
Speaker 1: get I mean, ultimately it's another headache, right because it
Speaker 1: still breaks. You still have to reload it, you have
Speaker 1: to dry. You end up dropping those little tiny leads
Speaker 1: all over the place. And I never liked mechanical pencils.
Speaker 1: I think I always have had too heavy of a
Speaker 1: hand when writing. I pressed down too hard, and so
Speaker 1: the mechanical pencil lead would always just snap instantly. I
Speaker 1: also as a heavy doodler. One of the things I
Speaker 1: noticed is that with the mechanical pencil, you pretty much
Speaker 1: always have the same um you can you're always making
Speaker 1: the same thickness of line for the most part, tiny gauge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But with a pencil, is it dolls? You can? And
Speaker 1: even if it's not dold, you can do more things
Speaker 1: on the paper when you're drawing, you know, goblins and
Speaker 1: castles in the margins of your notes. Yes, the cone
Speaker 1: of graphite becomes something that you can angle to its
Speaker 1: flat side if you want to, sort of like shade more.
Speaker 1: It's it's much more versatile, I believe. Yeah. But but
Speaker 1: either way, even as I grew tired of the mechanical pencil,
Speaker 1: I fell into the arms of the word processor, which
Speaker 1: I mean that's a whole whole episode of invention onto itself.
Speaker 1: The word processor is amazing. Uh. It it changed the
Speaker 1: way I wrote. It defines the way I write today. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so to a certain extent, I guess I kind
Speaker 1: of thought I was done with anything aside from you know,
Speaker 1: occasional sharpie's and uh in markers uh and the you
Speaker 1: know in pens for when you have to sign something,
Speaker 1: I guess, or to make a quick note. But otherwise
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I don't need to consider pencils
Speaker 1: ever again. But then two things happened first, um Um
Speaker 1: ended up becoming a parent. So I have a child
Speaker 1: who's going through elementary school, and suddenly pencils, old fashioned
Speaker 1: pencils were flowing back into my household or having to
Speaker 1: buy sharpeners, and I had to acknowledge, you know, given
Speaker 1: his schooling and he's learning to write and spell and
Speaker 1: doing a lot of physical homework in addition to digital homework. Uh,
Speaker 1: the pencil, the old fashioned pencil is is really wonderful technology.
Speaker 1: I've got a question that comes from this, Actually, why
Speaker 1: is it that we associate pencils with childhood and pens
Speaker 1: with adulthood? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, well, okay.
Speaker 1: Part of it I think is is the the eraser
Speaker 1: aspect of it, right, the idea that as you're learning,
Speaker 1: you will be making mistakes and you will need to
Speaker 1: correct things. And then adults make mistakes. Oh no, obviously,
Speaker 1: but perhaps there is this idea as adults that we
Speaker 1: don't make mistakes, We shouldn't be making mistakes, or you know,
Speaker 1: when we make a stake, mistakes will just cross it out.
Speaker 1: We don't have We're not turning our work into a supervisor,
Speaker 1: you know, to a teacher anymore we can. These are
Speaker 1: notes are mostly from my own purposes, and therefore I
Speaker 1: can do what I want. With adults, it's more important
Speaker 1: to have a constant reminder of your mistake, is a
Speaker 1: big scratched out blot on the page steering back each
Speaker 1: rather than something that you can erase all evidence of
Speaker 1: right now. Of course, there are some of you movies saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: there are erasable pins. I definitely remember. Irasable pins were horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was never a huge fan of them, but but
Speaker 1: they did exist. Just to acknowledge. But another thing that
Speaker 1: is very recently happening happened to me really in the
Speaker 1: last month is after like a five year period of
Speaker 1: being a dungeon master in Dungeons and Dragons, I became
Speaker 1: a player again under another dungeon master, so I had
Speaker 1: my physical character sheet. Again. One can use a digital
Speaker 1: character set, but I prefer the paper. And if you're
Speaker 1: going to be writing down a bunch of stats and belongings,
Speaker 1: you know, recording how much gold your character has, how
Speaker 1: many experience points, their hit points, etcetera, it really behooves
Speaker 1: you to have an erasable and erasable pencil. To have
Speaker 1: a pencil at your disposal for this. So I find
Speaker 1: myself using an old fashioned pencil once more and not
Speaker 1: only appreciating it, but marveling at the at the perfection
Speaker 1: of the device, of of this invention, of this writing
Speaker 1: implement the pencil. I got asked, do you go like
Speaker 1: full on pencil long thing with the eraser or you
Speaker 1: kind of a golf pencil game. I am not a
Speaker 1: golf pencil person, know what I'm really digging right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: And this feels a little extravagant when I compare it
Speaker 1: to my childhood experience with pencils pre sharpened Tai Conderoga
Speaker 1: pencils that come in the box already sharpen. You just
Speaker 1: take them out, they're ready to go. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to be just completely reckless, and I don't recommend this,
Speaker 1: you could like basically pull one out right with it
Speaker 1: until it breaks and then just throw it away. But
Speaker 1: don't do that, obviously. But then that's why I think
Speaker 1: it feels kind of extravagant, because I remember just using
Speaker 1: pencils until they were just gone. Oh. I loved it. Actually,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed getting a pencil down to the like
Speaker 1: the one inch zone. I thought that was fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where it had no no length on the pencil, no
Speaker 1: eraser remaining where I remember the replacement erasers that you
Speaker 1: put on the end of the pencil. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that fit over the end yea, which which really I
Speaker 1: found did not work all that well. You'd go to
Speaker 1: a race something, I'd just come off, but it would break. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they look cool. They're brightly colored, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of end up. That was the thing too.
Speaker 1: I remember just fetishizing writing implements as a child. You know,
Speaker 1: did you ever have one of those gigantic novelty parallelogram erasers,
Speaker 1: the standalone eraser that's parallelogram with the bent sides? Big,
Speaker 1: I don't think I had one of I tend to
Speaker 1: have tended to have the gum eraser like that dark brown,
Speaker 1: you know, just a just a try angular chunk. Do
Speaker 1: you remember this one? Now? Would I would have that?
Speaker 1: I know nothing of this. This is outside my world.
Speaker 1: Well or nice, especially if you're if you're engaging in
Speaker 1: you know, uh, pencil art. It's good to having like
Speaker 1: a nice art eracer art gum eracer on the side.
Speaker 1: Now you might wonder, like, well, how much could actually
Speaker 1: be out there about the pencil. You know, there's somebody,
Speaker 1: a scholar of engineering, who wrote an entire book about
Speaker 1: the history and invention of the pencil as like an
Speaker 1: injury from an engineer's perspective. Uh. This is a book
Speaker 1: by Henry Petrovski called The Pencil, A History of Design
Speaker 1: and Circumstance, published by Alfred A. Knopf in And. Petrovsky
Speaker 1: is an American engineer and a professor of civil engineering
Speaker 1: at Duke University. I haven't finished reading this whole book yet.
Speaker 1: It is a huge book about pencils, and it is
Speaker 1: it is great, Yeah, in more than one sense. In
Speaker 1: one sense, if you find any article online about the pencil,
Speaker 1: this book is inevitably cited, like he is the authority
Speaker 1: on pencils. And then, on the other hand, this is
Speaker 1: not a dry read. It is so like he has
Speaker 1: an incredible time just taking the pencil's history apart, contemplating
Speaker 1: what it means, what it says about the human experience,
Speaker 1: what it says about innovation and invention. It's extremely contemplative
Speaker 1: and full of what almost feels like oratory. Often the
Speaker 1: book feels like it is it is a speech that
Speaker 1: would have been delivered in ancient rome about like the
Speaker 1: virtues of engineering or or like there's almost a religious
Speaker 1: flare to it, like, Hello, my name is Henry Petrovski,
Speaker 1: and I would like to tell you about the pencil. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a lot of fun. And it's
Speaker 1: one reason it made me think, I'm not sure yet
Speaker 1: whether this is going to be our one episode about
Speaker 1: the pencil, or maybe we'll need to explore more, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll have to come back. Yeah, we'll have to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on it, because as we explore the pencil,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to talk about and a number
Speaker 1: of other writing implements, and we're going to have to
Speaker 1: talk about the racer as well. So uh, let's let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and dive in. Generally, our our format on
Speaker 1: the show is to begin with what came before. Obviously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: pencils haven't been here forever. We know writing predates the pencil,
Speaker 1: So so what does that world look like? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's just think for a second about writing implements. At
Speaker 1: a very basic level, the act of writing or even
Speaker 1: drawing requires you to either add to a given surface,
Speaker 1: subtract from a given surface, or but just in some
Speaker 1: way disrupt an existing layer or a pile of particles, right,
Speaker 1: And the most basic tool to do this is of
Speaker 1: course the human finger. So with the finger in mind,
Speaker 1: you can even pull yours out and look at it.
Speaker 1: Right now, Um, let's let's consider a few examples. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, the additive model. So if you were
Speaker 1: to dab your finger in dye, in oil, in blood,
Speaker 1: or smearit with ash and then trace a few lines
Speaker 1: on a surface, that is uh, you know, additive writing
Speaker 1: that you're adding to something to create the act. Right,
Speaker 1: then there is subtractive Okay, If you use your fingernail
Speaker 1: to scratch a few lines into a surface by removing
Speaker 1: the outer layers such as you know, layers of bark
Speaker 1: on a tree, a stone face, paint on a house,
Speaker 1: or on a metal sign, that sort of thing, then
Speaker 1: you were subtracting from it to make your mark. And
Speaker 1: both of these methods of making marks go far back
Speaker 1: into prehistory. Like if you look at a cave paintings
Speaker 1: or petroglyphs, some of these are going to be additive,
Speaker 1: where you know that they've created some kind of pigment
Speaker 1: out of something and then painted that onto cave walls,
Speaker 1: others are going to be subtractive where you see carvings
Speaker 1: that are left behind his indentations, right, and then there's
Speaker 1: this other area which is is kind of in between,
Speaker 1: and that's just disruption. So if you were to trace
Speaker 1: the same lines through, say the accumulated dust on a
Speaker 1: given surface, or the accumulated ash following say, you know,
Speaker 1: volcanic eruption, it's the perfect way to use your finger
Speaker 1: as a writing implement. When you realize that you can
Speaker 1: write wash me on the dusty back of somebody's car, right,
Speaker 1: But even without surfaces like that, you know you can
Speaker 1: you can write in the in the dirt or in
Speaker 1: the sand with your finger. It's it's not quite subtraction
Speaker 1: or addition. It is much more of a disruption of
Speaker 1: the of what is before you. So that's just a
Speaker 1: basic way to to look at it. But of course
Speaker 1: humans didn't just create language, they also created tools. So
Speaker 1: the finger is just the beginning. Let's consider a few
Speaker 1: more examples of each of these forms of writing. Uh,
Speaker 1: but instead of stopping at the finger, will go beyond
Speaker 1: the finger into instruments. Let's insert beyond the finger music. Alright,
Speaker 1: going beyond the finger so let's start with both the
Speaker 1: subtractive and disruption sort of you know, putting together into
Speaker 1: one category here. I think a fine example of this
Speaker 1: is the use of a stylus to make marks in
Speaker 1: a wax or clay tablet. And this was used from
Speaker 1: ancient times well into the Middle Ages. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: probably it would be the oldest examples of like character
Speaker 1: based writing we have, right, would be, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: from like ancient Mesopotamia using stylists to make indentations in
Speaker 1: like a clay or wax surface. And for a more
Speaker 1: modern example, I think you have some of these novelty
Speaker 1: toys where you use a magnetic stylists to move around
Speaker 1: iron filings. Yeah, you know, generally you're not maybe writing something,
Speaker 1: you're more like putting a mustache of iron filings onto
Speaker 1: a cartoon face. But but that I think also is
Speaker 1: an example of what we're talking about here now. Speaking
Speaker 1: of of of the stylists or or styles, which I
Speaker 1: believe is the plural um, Petrovsky writes that iron styles
Speaker 1: were known to be often misused in Roman times because
Speaker 1: one of the things about a fine tipped metal object
Speaker 1: is you can also use them to stab people. So uh.
Speaker 1: So sometimes they were banned in favor of ivory or
Speaker 1: other materials, which of course begs the question can't you
Speaker 1: stab somebody with ivory? Obviously you can. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can stab somebody with a number two pencil if it's
Speaker 1: sharpened enough. And um, you know so I don't entirely
Speaker 1: understand the prohibition there. Um. But lead was also a
Speaker 1: particularly favored material at the time as well, and we
Speaker 1: can come back to that. Yes, Now let's talk about
Speaker 1: additive writing implements. The use of chalk and slate is
Speaker 1: a great example, and that goes back at least to
Speaker 1: like the eighth century. Uh. And the the use of
Speaker 1: ink on a brush or in a pin is another
Speaker 1: good example. The history of of the ink pen will
Speaker 1: have to, I think, wait for another episode of this show,
Speaker 1: but suffice to say that reed pens were used in
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt five thousand years ago and are still used today.
Speaker 1: In some places. Quills have been used for this purpose
Speaker 1: as well as have metal nibs. The ink pin with
Speaker 1: a reservoir dates back seemingly at least as far as
Speaker 1: the tenth century CEU to northern Africa, and then of
Speaker 1: course the pencil. The modern pencil that we're talking about
Speaker 1: in this episode. Uh, this is additive as well, um,
Speaker 1: and an additive method that uses a graphite cord length
Speaker 1: of wood sharpened on one end and capped with a
Speaker 1: rubber eraser on the other. Though of course sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: still find pencils that are either uh not capped, whether
Speaker 1: an eraser or capped with with just metal. Yeah, your
Speaker 1: golf pencils not capped. Yeah, that's the the low rent version. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a break and the when we
Speaker 1: come back, we can discuss the pencil in terms of
Speaker 1: names and materials. All right, we're back, So let's start
Speaker 1: with the name of this invention itself. Yes, So it
Speaker 1: turns out the name of the pencil actually pre dates
Speaker 1: what we would think of as a pencil, which is
Speaker 1: this thing made of wood with or even you know,
Speaker 1: mechanical pencil either way, with a letter, graphite core inside
Speaker 1: the the eraser on the back. Things that were really
Speaker 1: not much like that. We're called a pencil long before
Speaker 1: this existed, that's right. According to Petroski, this refers to
Speaker 1: the penicillum brush um, which this was the Latin name
Speaker 1: for a writing instrument that consisted of a tuft of
Speaker 1: animal hair that was inserted into a hollow read. So
Speaker 1: if you can imagine, yeah, you have you have this
Speaker 1: this tuft of animal hair that I think it's like
Speaker 1: kind of curled and shaped, and then you insert that
Speaker 1: through a hollowed out read, hollow read and then that
Speaker 1: way you're holding the read on the outside, but in
Speaker 1: the interior of it is this, uh, this animal hair. Right,
Speaker 1: So what you would have is a a long, solid
Speaker 1: implement I believe it would be the same length or
Speaker 1: so of a pencil of today. But then out the
Speaker 1: end of it you would have a fine gathering of
Speaker 1: animal hairs all clumped together by the opening at the
Speaker 1: end of the read. So what it would create is
Speaker 1: this fine tipped little brush. Yeah. And and and to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, it mind is one of various animal tails.
Speaker 1: And in this we kind of get into the curious
Speaker 1: history of the word, the name itself, and and also
Speaker 1: I think we touched on the the euphemism treadmill that
Speaker 1: we've discussed on stuff to blow your mind in the past.
Speaker 1: Because the Latin name stems from penaesulis, the for the
Speaker 1: for brush, which is a diminutive form of the word
Speaker 1: penis which is Latin for tail. So a pencil is
Speaker 1: literally a little tale. Yes, And if you're wondering, I
Speaker 1: did look it up. Was the word penis in Latin?
Speaker 1: Did that actually ever mean penis like it does in
Speaker 1: English today? Apparently sometimes it did, but originally what it
Speaker 1: meant was tail, And then again through some like process
Speaker 1: of euphemisms or whatever associations, it also came to me
Speaker 1: and what it means in English today. So call it
Speaker 1: what you will. Let's consider the particular strength of the
Speaker 1: modern pencil based on what we've been talking about so far.
Speaker 1: So first of all, it is portable. It is highly portable,
Speaker 1: and I smudge roof to a very large degree at
Speaker 1: least when you Yes, you can smudge pencil etchings. But
Speaker 1: compare it to ink, compare it to a chalk on
Speaker 1: a board. Uh, it's I think it's it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that it's pretty smudge free. It's less messy than
Speaker 1: most of these other forms of writing. It is erasable
Speaker 1: on untreated paper, and uh, certainly today anyway, it is inexpensive.
Speaker 1: People regularly treat the pencil like dirt. I'll walk my
Speaker 1: son into school and they'll be like a pencil and
Speaker 1: a mud puddle and um, and of course I've kind
Speaker 1: of been broken by our disposable culture to where I
Speaker 1: would just pass it by. He'll stop, He'll pick it
Speaker 1: up out of the mud puddle and be like, look,
Speaker 1: here's a pencil. We should say this, And sometimes they
Speaker 1: have to say, oh, I think you're right. Later, the
Speaker 1: eracer looks pretty good on that one. It's it's even
Speaker 1: still sharpened. Okay, let's dry it off. That's the sweetest
Speaker 1: thing saving a pencil. Yeah, I mean, and I agree
Speaker 1: with them now that I'm I'm forcing myself to respect
Speaker 1: the pencil a lot more now by Roman times, I
Speaker 1: think that Petroski uh points out that you have two
Speaker 1: different uh threads of technology that would eventually unite to
Speaker 1: become the pencil we have today, because in those times
Speaker 1: we had the penicillum, the brush, the read with the
Speaker 1: hair through it, and that that would sort of supply
Speaker 1: the elements that you think of of like a long
Speaker 1: thing that you can hold in your hand to write with.
Speaker 1: It's rigid and it makes a dark, fine mark on
Speaker 1: the page. And but the other thing he points out
Speaker 1: is that at the time, lead was literally used as
Speaker 1: a writing implement and this would have been real lead,
Speaker 1: not the graphite of today. Uh. So, you know, there
Speaker 1: are several reasons that lead would be useful as a
Speaker 1: writing implement. Number one is very soft and so it
Speaker 1: can rub off on a writing surface to easily leave
Speaker 1: a mark. But that mark, if you were just like
Speaker 1: holding a chunk of lead in your hand to write with,
Speaker 1: the mark would probably not be very dark. It would
Speaker 1: be kind of light colored, and it would not be uh,
Speaker 1: and it would not necessarily be very permanent. Maybe it
Speaker 1: could easily get rubbed off and also kind of be
Speaker 1: hard to hold the chunk in your hand as you're writing.
Speaker 1: So it seems like these two things could ultimately kind
Speaker 1: of converged, right. Yeah, Now, a quick note on lead
Speaker 1: for starters. There's an older episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind our other podcast titled Cupids Laden Arrow, which
Speaker 1: is about lead and about the history of lead and
Speaker 1: how lead was used, and we get into a lot
Speaker 1: of Roman uses of lead and then as well. Another
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind is that graphite was a
Speaker 1: long thought to be a form of lead and was
Speaker 1: sometimes classified as such. Thus some of our confusion at
Speaker 1: time regarding the lead in our pencil. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: there is a specific material reason why something like lead
Speaker 1: would have been useful for writing, And again it's that
Speaker 1: it's soft to the lead. The paper that you write
Speaker 1: on is kind of like sand paper. It just you know,
Speaker 1: scrapes it right off and leave some on there to
Speaker 1: be your additive marking material. Absolutely, so, of course, graphite
Speaker 1: or lead or charcoal, any of these things in and
Speaker 1: of themselves can be used as a writing implement. You
Speaker 1: could just have a chunk of of graphite in your hand,
Speaker 1: but do you actually want to write with that? Do
Speaker 1: you want your hand to potentially cramp. That's something that
Speaker 1: Petrusky touches on a number of times is that you
Speaker 1: need a writing implement that is not too big or
Speaker 1: too small, like if you had to write with a
Speaker 1: golfing pencil all the time. Like a golfing pencil is
Speaker 1: ideal because ultimately you're not writing, You're you're only gonna
Speaker 1: be so verbose while you're keeping score during a golf game.
Speaker 1: You just need to jot down a few numbers here
Speaker 1: and there. There's no you know, introductory paragraph or a
Speaker 1: self reflection essay. Only needs to be useful enough to cheat. Right.
Speaker 1: Another question is do you want that graphite or lead
Speaker 1: all over your hand and your fingers and then potentially
Speaker 1: all over your work surface while you're writing. Uh, Thus
Speaker 1: the need to encase it in something much like the
Speaker 1: read casing um of the the sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the earlier pencil, the penicillum that we discussed earlier. So
Speaker 1: so there's that side of the advancement. The other side
Speaker 1: of the advancement, of course, is that paper became increasingly cheaper,
Speaker 1: and graphite then was an increasingly favored means of etching
Speaker 1: on it, especially after a deposit of fine graphite was
Speaker 1: an earth in Cumbria, England during the fifteen hundreds. By
Speaker 1: the way, in this region today you'll find the Derwent
Speaker 1: Pencil Museum in what is now Kesswick. They have the
Speaker 1: largest colored pencil in the world. That sounds like something
Speaker 1: worth stopping on your road trip for right now. I
Speaker 1: did note that they specify the largest colored pencil in
Speaker 1: the world, which makes me think there must be an
Speaker 1: even larger just graphite pencil somewhere in the world, but
Speaker 1: I do not know where that is. So I would
Speaker 1: love to hear from our listeners if they know where
Speaker 1: we can find such a titan pencil. It's got to
Speaker 1: be in Florida. So I was reading another article on this.
Speaker 1: This one came from Howard J. Bennett in the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: There was an article uh, ever wondered about the lead
Speaker 1: and pencils. Uh. And he points out that, yes, graphite
Speaker 1: was thought to be a form of lead at the time,
Speaker 1: and this is why we still refer to the lead
Speaker 1: and the pencil. But at the time, a graphite stylus
Speaker 1: was just a sawed off stick of graphite, sort of
Speaker 1: like a thick crayon. Um, Bennett writes, with no paper
Speaker 1: wrapped around it. And you would you would whittle down
Speaker 1: one end of it with a knife as you would
Speaker 1: like whittle a stick, and then use that to write with.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound very fun. It's yeah, it's You're just
Speaker 1: gonna get a graphite all over your fingers, right. Petrovsky
Speaker 1: comments at length, actually about the interesting phenomenon of tools
Speaker 1: and materials that are named after the original materials they
Speaker 1: were made out of, but no longer are made out
Speaker 1: of those materials. So you've got the lead and a pencil,
Speaker 1: the silverware you use, which is made out of stainless steel,
Speaker 1: and he talks about how I think. In England erasers
Speaker 1: are often called rubbers, even though they're probably now made
Speaker 1: out of some petroleum product. Yeah, it's like we we
Speaker 1: the terminology sticks, even though the material changes. So in
Speaker 1: the late fifteen hundreds people began gluing graphite rods inside
Speaker 1: wooden sleeves because it's essentially what we're talking about here
Speaker 1: with the pencil. Even though you know, generally I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a pencil right now, and you certainly do not
Speaker 1: do not get that sense from looking at the modern
Speaker 1: version of it. You don't feel like this is a
Speaker 1: thing that was assembled. It almost feels like something that
Speaker 1: was grown. Yeah, I know what you mean. And certainly
Speaker 1: manufacturing processes have changed somewhat since then. But anyway, fifteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: something like the modern pencil uh comes into the world.
Speaker 1: So you might be wondering, then if we have any
Speaker 1: actual names or places to consider here. So if you
Speaker 1: go to the Wikipedia entry for pencils, and it's a
Speaker 1: logical place to go. We were Wikipedia fans here. I
Speaker 1: think we've discussed in the show or stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind before that. You know, Wikipedia is an increasingly
Speaker 1: good place to get like a general idea of what's
Speaker 1: going on with the topic, and sometimes a very in
Speaker 1: depth look at a particular topic not a good final source,
Speaker 1: so say, because you know anybody can edit it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's often a great place to start out. But if
Speaker 1: if you do, go to Wikipedia's entry for pencils, you'll
Speaker 1: find Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti credited with this advancement UH
Speaker 1: circle of fifteen sixty in Italy. So the sources on
Speaker 1: this are a Rocket City Space Pioneers page which had
Speaker 1: a short article titled who invented the pencil? Despite the
Speaker 1: Rocket City Space Pioneers having been a past Google Lunar
Speaker 1: X Prize participant and not really you know, a website
Speaker 1: associated with the history of writing implements. That's interesting. It
Speaker 1: also cites a history of Information dot com website written
Speaker 1: by Jeremy Norman, who wrote quote, uh, Simon Eo and
Speaker 1: Lidiana Bernacotti are believed to have created the first carpentry pencil.
Speaker 1: They did this by hollow hollowing out a stick of
Speaker 1: juniper wood. Okay, don't necessarily sound like the most solid
Speaker 1: of sources I've all, but I've also seen this line
Speaker 1: of reasoning picked up on an least one um uh
Speaker 1: you know journal article Uh, simplicity as a route to
Speaker 1: impact a material research by ten at Allen and Advanced Materials.
Speaker 1: But I at least can't find much to back up
Speaker 1: or elaborate upon these individuals. Uh, though perhaps I'm missing something.
Speaker 1: Petrovsky did not mention these two individuals when he wrote
Speaker 1: the following in his book on Pencils. Quote. Exactly when
Speaker 1: and where pencils containing graphite were first made and used
Speaker 1: appears to be unrecorded, as are so many technological milestones.
Speaker 1: There are undocumented assertations that that place the discovery of
Speaker 1: the graphite that Gessner refers to as early as about
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred and as late as fifteen sixty five, the
Speaker 1: date of his book, But the scanty evidence generally points
Speaker 1: to the unearthing of the pencils marking substance the new
Speaker 1: unrefined mineral or English antimony as sometime in the early
Speaker 1: fifteen sixties in Cumberland. So this would be referring to graphite. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: So that seemed to be about the best we can
Speaker 1: do in terms of you know, finding you, because we
Speaker 1: do always want we always want to find that Eureka
Speaker 1: moment you always want to find that that first individual
Speaker 1: and the cool story about how they you know, accidentally
Speaker 1: invented the pencil or saw it in a dream and
Speaker 1: made hit a reality. But like you said, sometimes we
Speaker 1: just don't have an answer. It just kind of emerges
Speaker 1: from what people are doing at that time. Well, this
Speaker 1: is actually something Petrovsky talks about in his book A
Speaker 1: Good Bit, which is that much of the history of
Speaker 1: engineering is unrecorded um because for much of human history,
Speaker 1: engineering was not thought of as something that deserved to
Speaker 1: be written about, um. Like he talks about in Ancient Rome. Vitruvius,
Speaker 1: you know, writes this great treatise on architecture where it's
Speaker 1: clear that Vitruvius is is he really knows his stuff
Speaker 1: in terms of engineering and architecture of the day, but
Speaker 1: he's a terrible writer. Like he didn't you know, bother
Speaker 1: to go out and say, like, I'm going to get
Speaker 1: a better writer to do this. So, you know, people
Speaker 1: have commented through the years that his Latin sucks, um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I think it's just because historically it's
Speaker 1: a fairly unusual attitude that that, uh, that engineering innovation
Speaker 1: is worth being written about, and a lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, especially worth being written about in like sources
Speaker 1: that are meant to be you know, read by the
Speaker 1: public and sustained over time. A lot of times, if
Speaker 1: we want insights from literary sources on the history of engineering,
Speaker 1: you have to like look at people's diaries and letters
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, and then it's something we've just seen
Speaker 1: in the past. Who as you have like a situation
Speaker 1: where is the person who who happens upon an innovation
Speaker 1: or even an invention just in order to do to
Speaker 1: get the work done, to get through the day, you know,
Speaker 1: be it like create essentially creating the forerunner of the
Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzle in order to be a better teacher, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And then there's the person who comes
Speaker 1: along and says, m hmmm, I bet I could make
Speaker 1: some money off of that. I could mass produce that, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So no offense to the bernacottis I don't know where
Speaker 1: whether I buy that or not. But I mean they
Speaker 1: very very well maybe true, we just do not have
Speaker 1: perhaps robust evidence enough, uh you know, to to uh
Speaker 1: you know, to state that that is what happened. Okay,
Speaker 1: so question mark on that, yes, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: it there it certainly catches on. And then later in
Speaker 1: sevente it was discovered that one could vary the hardness
Speaker 1: of a pencil's lead by mixing powdered graphite with clay
Speaker 1: and firing it in a kiln. The more clay, the
Speaker 1: harder the lead. And this is ideal if you want
Speaker 1: a finely sharpened pencil that won't break easily. Well, that
Speaker 1: that's the friend of the heavy handed like me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um and and also yeah, it allows you again
Speaker 1: to make different types of lines and strokes. Right, you
Speaker 1: have the finely sharpened pencil where you can do a
Speaker 1: lot of very fine work. But then as it gets duller,
Speaker 1: you can, uh, you can color in those shapes. You can.
Speaker 1: You know, it changes how you're writing. But uh, it
Speaker 1: also gives you a lot more versatility. Okay, So whoever
Speaker 1: actually invented it, we know by the fifteen hundreds, these
Speaker 1: graphite cores were being inserted into these wooden outlines, and
Speaker 1: then by the late seventeen hundreds they had found a
Speaker 1: better way to incorporate graphite by mixing it with the
Speaker 1: this clay, and you're getting something more like the pencil
Speaker 1: product we're familiar with, right, yeah, and it's it's inside
Speaker 1: inside the wood. So we almost have the pencil that
Speaker 1: we uh, the basic form of the pencil that we
Speaker 1: have today. But of course it's missing something on one end,
Speaker 1: and that would be the racer, which we'll get to
Speaker 1: in a bit. For now, we're going to take a break,
Speaker 1: but we will be right back to continue our exploration. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. You know one thing that I meant to
Speaker 1: mention earlier that I think is really net. Petrovsky has
Speaker 1: a lot of little tangents and had bits of history
Speaker 1: throughout this book, and in discussing, like the the advantages
Speaker 1: of a pencil over other writing implements, he shares a
Speaker 1: little bit about the Scottish poet Robert Burns who lived
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty nine through seventeen nine and his reported fondness
Speaker 1: for writing on glass panes with a with either it
Speaker 1: seems to depend on who you're reading on this, either
Speaker 1: a diamond pointed pen or stylists, or perhaps a diamond ring. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh so he's using it to, you know, to
Speaker 1: etch into the glass pane permanently, um, composing poetry upon
Speaker 1: it or within it, depending on how you look at it.
Speaker 1: And a number of these diamond point engravings can still
Speaker 1: be found throughout Scotland, though some maybe fakes apparently not
Speaker 1: actually Robie right, but but when out there has you know,
Speaker 1: certainly if you if you are Scottish, or if you've
Speaker 1: lived in Scotland or traveled in Scotland for any length
Speaker 1: of time and you've you've seen one of the uh,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you about it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: they're they're often celebrated, um and uh in. Petrovsky argues
Speaker 1: that the pencil delivers on a number of the strengths
Speaker 1: exhibited by this technique without having to rely on fine
Speaker 1: stones and vandalism, though interestingly enough, he stresses the graphite
Speaker 1: in a pencil is chemically the same as a diamond.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the same constituents, different structure. Yeah, we're my love,
Speaker 1: Jon carbon fair alright. So coming back to the pencil itself.
Speaker 1: The pencil was then used in congress with ink for
Speaker 1: a long time as a way of say, lightly marking
Speaker 1: the margins or even tracing characters, before bringing in permanent
Speaker 1: ink to h to make it permanent and of course
Speaker 1: to you know, to stand out more. Bright black ink
Speaker 1: on parchment, But the pencil becomes steadily more important, evolving
Speaker 1: from a mere instrument among many to being the writing
Speaker 1: implement par excellence of the pre computer world. Just think,
Speaker 1: for example, of how we use pencil in the English language,
Speaker 1: you know, to pencil someone or something in uh the
Speaker 1: uh the adage about this is why pencils have erasers.
Speaker 1: You know, that's something that made at times feel a
Speaker 1: little um hokey today. But but Petrosky actually talks about
Speaker 1: it a little bit like you know that when it
Speaker 1: is first rolled out. I believe a pastor use this
Speaker 1: analogy and does I think that is one of the
Speaker 1: things about the pencil that is appealing is that it does,
Speaker 1: on some level, even if it is a hokey level,
Speaker 1: it sums up something about the human experience. And of course,
Speaker 1: even if we're not gonna wax poetic about all of this,
Speaker 1: it is hard to imagine and hard to use a
Speaker 1: pencil without an eraser, like the two just go hand
Speaker 1: in hand, right, So you're probably wondering when does the
Speaker 1: eraser affix itself to the pencil. When does this invention
Speaker 1: come along or this innovation anyway, So the concept of
Speaker 1: an eraser itself certainly predates the pencil really because scribes
Speaker 1: have always made mistakes, They've always needed to remove unwanted
Speaker 1: etchings from a manuscript. I think pretty recently we got
Speaker 1: a piece of Listener mail with somebody talking about the
Speaker 1: use of knives to scrape away ink from parchment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because when you're when you have ink on parchment, especially
Speaker 1: pricey parchment, parchment that is valuable and must be used
Speaker 1: and reused, Uh, you're gonna have to scrape it off.
Speaker 1: So you might use a small knife to do that. Um.
Speaker 1: Another thing you might use is a stone or a
Speaker 1: bit of dried wax or crustless bread. Was a huge
Speaker 1: was it was not just a random thing. It was
Speaker 1: like a standard that you would have the bread. There were,
Speaker 1: you know, all these little um uh tangents and writings
Speaker 1: about saying like the hungry scribes succumbing to their to
Speaker 1: their hunger and consuming the bread that they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be using to you know, for erasure. Gross. But
Speaker 1: of course, the spread of rubber technology ends up changing
Speaker 1: all of this. So natural rubber had been used in
Speaker 1: Mesoamerica by the Mayans and the text uh you know,
Speaker 1: but for uses such as the production of rubber, sports balls, um,
Speaker 1: as well as I think like waterproofing and various other
Speaker 1: material uses, uh, you know, for which rubber is very
Speaker 1: very handy. But then the French bring this material back
Speaker 1: to Europe and we go from there. But then in
Speaker 1: the late eighteenth century you have a British inventor and
Speaker 1: scientific instrument maker come along by the name of Edward
Speaker 1: Nairn who lived through eighteen o six, and he starts
Speaker 1: selling cubes of rubber for erasure in seventeen seventy, claiming
Speaker 1: that he accidentally discovered the use of this use for
Speaker 1: rubber when he reached for bread to erase something and
Speaker 1: grabbed a chunk of rubber instead from grabbed my trick
Speaker 1: rubber sandwich by accident, which, uh, it's a nice story,
Speaker 1: but it also sounds like a little it's too much
Speaker 1: of a good story, like maybe he was just looking
Speaker 1: at it. My my take is it seemed more likely
Speaker 1: that you were to kind of looking and I bet
Speaker 1: I could erase some something with that, Or maybe he
Speaker 1: already ate the bread and just didn't want to admit it.
Speaker 1: Narn is an interesting figure even without taking into account
Speaker 1: all of this, um, you know, rubber and eraser business
Speaker 1: because he made a number of improvements to various scientific
Speaker 1: instruments of the day, including the microscope and the telescope,
Speaker 1: and he created the first successful marine barometer. Given his
Speaker 1: place in the in history, it should come as no
Speaker 1: surprise that he corresponded with an individual that we've talked
Speaker 1: about in the show before, none other than Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 1: What do you know, Franklin effect, He even made a
Speaker 1: set of magnets and a telescope before Benjamin Franklin. So
Speaker 1: after this uh discovery slash innovation, uh, the eraser soon
Speaker 1: becomes a common companion of the pencil, and Petrovsky points
Speaker 1: to various pencil cases uh that included an eraser, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much like a big rectangular lump of an eraser
Speaker 1: that is in the case with the pencils. But they
Speaker 1: would have still remained separate at the not one unified instrument,
Speaker 1: just two instruments that come together. Yes, as far as
Speaker 1: we know, they did not actually come together into a
Speaker 1: single instrument until the late nineteenth century. So who can
Speaker 1: we thank for this invention? Well, looking at Petrovsky's extensive
Speaker 1: work as well as a Pagan Kennedy two thirteen New
Speaker 1: York Times magazine article who made that built in eraser?
Speaker 1: There are three individuals slash entities to highlight here. First
Speaker 1: of all, let's look at eighteen fifty eight. Himan Lippmann
Speaker 1: of Philadelphia was awarded a patent for his invention of
Speaker 1: a pencil with a groove at the tip that could
Speaker 1: be that could contain a glued in hunk of rubber
Speaker 1: and fun fact here, apparently one of Lippmann's ideas, too,
Speaker 1: was that the eraser could be embedded inside the wood shaft,
Speaker 1: just like the graph ideas. So you would have to
Speaker 1: sharpen both ends of your pencil, one to allow the
Speaker 1: graphite to emerge and the other to allow the eraser
Speaker 1: to emerge. Maybe, so we go half and half, like
Speaker 1: half graphite half eraser, right, Yeah, So that that Pagan
Speaker 1: Kennedy article includes a drawing of what this might have
Speaker 1: looked like. So that's an interesting alternate reality to consider,
Speaker 1: all right. Then, in the early eighteen sixties, the Faber Firm,
Speaker 1: the key individual here being uh ebiter Hard Faber. UH
Speaker 1: may have been the first company to put out eraser
Speaker 1: tipped pencils, as well as uh as pencils that had
Speaker 1: like a metal cap on the end as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had an early eighteen sixties patent for quote a
Speaker 1: lead pencil with an angulated rubber seal head which serves
Speaker 1: as a seal, a preventer against rolling and as an eraser.
Speaker 1: Rolling is an interesting um concept with the pencil, you know,
Speaker 1: because you look at a pencil today and certainly the
Speaker 1: modern eracer you probably doesn't help prevent rolling. But the
Speaker 1: shape of the wood does. You can rest a pencil
Speaker 1: on one of its sides. Well, you're you're talking about
Speaker 1: what like the hexagonal cross section pencils, Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: guess they're the most common type. Though. I remember when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I had perfectly round pencils, and well,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure we have we do have some perfectly
Speaker 1: round pencils in our house. I think some colored pencils particularly,
Speaker 1: and of course they roll all over the place. But
Speaker 1: this this uh, this fine Taikonderoga pencil in front of
Speaker 1: me here yet it can I can put it on
Speaker 1: the desk and it stays put. It's very well behaved. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, and then uh. In eighteen sixty two, entrepreneur
Speaker 1: Joseph Reckendorff sought to improve on Littman's patent. So he
Speaker 1: bought the patent for a hundred thousand dollars, which is
Speaker 1: about two million dollars in todays dollars, and then he
Speaker 1: sued a favor for infringement. As Kennedy writes, uh if
Speaker 1: all you know, if this would have held up, he
Speaker 1: would have become a titan industry. He would have been
Speaker 1: the master of the modern eraser tipped pencil. But the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruled in eighteen seventy five that the eraser
Speaker 1: tipped pencil didn't count as a legitimate invention because he
Speaker 1: was simply combining to existing and widespread inventions into a
Speaker 1: new product. So my alarm clock toaster has no hope.
Speaker 1: What's kind of like there was an episode of Uh
Speaker 1: Fly of the Concords where there was a character who
Speaker 1: had a camera phone and it was like a camera
Speaker 1: glued to a phone. It's kind of like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the with with the pencil eraser, you've just taken
Speaker 1: an eraser and and fixed it on the end. I
Speaker 1: guess there's an argument that you're not really inventing something,
Speaker 1: but it does feel big. It does feel huge. I
Speaker 1: I to a certain extent. I it's a fantas sorry
Speaker 1: for this guy. Yeah, it's a fantastic leap forward in convenience.
Speaker 1: I think that counts as an invention, though, I guess
Speaker 1: you you just have to have some kind of subjective
Speaker 1: judgment about how innovative the linking of the two things
Speaker 1: actually is. Yeah. One thing we forgot to cover, which
Speaker 1: I also remember from my childhood, or pencils or pins
Speaker 1: they're capped in something other than a metal tip or
Speaker 1: a race like a couchh ball or um. I've seen
Speaker 1: them too, where you have like a dusting implement for
Speaker 1: like a computer screen thing or some sort of like
Speaker 1: toy or gadget. Oh I had one. This This is
Speaker 1: a big memory for me because I remember buying it
Speaker 1: and being super proud of the purchase, and I'm really
Speaker 1: being proud of it for a number of years. Is
Speaker 1: that I had a Gremlin's two pencil that was capped
Speaker 1: in a grimlin uh that as if it were like
Speaker 1: it was perched on the pencil top like it was.
Speaker 1: It was like holding onto the pencil and I love
Speaker 1: that thing. I don't think I ever sharpened it. I
Speaker 1: was so proud of it. That's so good. I wish
Speaker 1: I had had that. I think I had like a
Speaker 1: tazz that could go over the back of the pencil,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. I don't want out myself as
Speaker 1: a taz guy. But but no, it comes back to
Speaker 1: how I think as children, we would fetishize the pencil,
Speaker 1: and we would we would. I mean a lot of times,
Speaker 1: especially I mengtioned in cases where you have like school uniforms.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to stand out, you want to
Speaker 1: say something with your choice of writing implement. That is
Speaker 1: very true. Yeah, well, I mean it goes beyond just
Speaker 1: like decorations for the pencils. You'd have different kinds of pencils,
Speaker 1: like the wacky pencils of course, have been around in
Speaker 1: different things that I remember people at my school being
Speaker 1: very into like the gel pens that seemed almost like
Speaker 1: it like an identity forming kind of signal. Er Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of the eraser, uh, Petrovsky rites that as erasers
Speaker 1: became more and more popular, there was actually kind of
Speaker 1: a backlash to them. It's kind of almost like a
Speaker 1: future shock technological anxiety concerning uh, the erase ability of text,
Speaker 1: and people were saying, well, how do I how do
Speaker 1: I write with a pencil so nobody erases it. How
Speaker 1: can I protect my writings from a racier? And so
Speaker 1: there were you know, people were giving advice on how
Speaker 1: to do this or also how to treat the paper
Speaker 1: after you've written, say with I think they were talking
Speaker 1: about using a milk wash on the paper. Um so um,
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting as well. Like it just a reminder, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that anytime there's some sort of new technology, certainly of
Speaker 1: it affects the way that we're using language or using
Speaker 1: the written word. Uh, it can cause a bit of
Speaker 1: h you know, it can stir up anxiety, It can
Speaker 1: stir up a little fear, even because it's it's changing
Speaker 1: how we express ourselves, how we define ourselves. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean people, well, people reacting to the concept and of
Speaker 1: an invention without considering the practicality of what it is
Speaker 1: they're worried about, Like it would be easier to just
Speaker 1: burn somebody's writings than to erase everything they had written down,
Speaker 1: and that that burning technology has existed for quite a while. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or it also gets down to the fact of how
Speaker 1: do you how do you? How how does forgery work?
Speaker 1: Forgery comes back to the very principles of writing. We
Speaker 1: began with you can there's additive forgery, but there's also
Speaker 1: subtractive forgery. You know, you can if you want to
Speaker 1: change the grade on your test that's being sent home
Speaker 1: that your teacher wrote in red ink, Well you can
Speaker 1: get yourself a red pen and that that f becomes
Speaker 1: a be rather easily. Right. But then the truth comes
Speaker 1: to collect at the end of the semester, when your
Speaker 1: final grades come in. The harder to alter you can
Speaker 1: only Uh, forgery is only gonna get you so far.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, there you have it. Uh, that's the
Speaker 1: pencil in a nutshell. But obviously there are a number
Speaker 1: of different roads that we did not take here that
Speaker 1: we could easily come back to. We could discuss the
Speaker 1: pen for at least an episode, because there are a
Speaker 1: number of different innovations with the ink pen over the
Speaker 1: years that are worth discussing. UM. For for that matter, UM,
Speaker 1: written language is a big one, UM, and then the
Speaker 1: various forms of writing. Also rubber rubber technology, UH technology
Speaker 1: that comes in the wake of rubber. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun we could have with that as well. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Invention what you can go to invention pod
Speaker 1: dot com and that will shoot you over to a
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Speaker 1: where you can subscribe. Basically, you can get the show
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts these days, wherever that happens
Speaker 1: to be. Just make sure that you rate, review, and subscribe.
Speaker 1: Those are the things that really help us out and
Speaker 1: check out our other show as well. Stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind if you haven't already. Again, we have an
Speaker 1: excellent episode on lead uh that you can check out,
Speaker 1: and we we cover language a lot on that show,
Speaker 1: so it's a good place to to look for more
Speaker 1: on related topics. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other to suggest topic for the future, just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at invention
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