
The Write Stuff: How the Humble Pencil Conquered the World - NaOH
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a21567/history-of-the-pencil
======
JetSetWilly
> Most American pencils had pink or red erasers at the back by the 1920s.
> (Today these erasers are often made of vinyl, a type of plastic.) Almost
> everywhere else in the world, erasers have remained separate from pencils.

It is very common for pencils to have a rubber at the end here in the UK - you
can buy pencils with and without in any stationary section.

~~~
igravious
Ireland also. But I wouldn't be able to say what percentage you'd find in a
stationery store are enrubbered. By the way, what's the slowest kind of store?
Write your answer in pencil on the back of a postcard to the following
address:

    
    
        "Lame Jokes R Us"
        Graphite Way,
        Borrowdale,
        England, UK.

------
dredmorbius
Nabokov's "I Pencil". A rather refreshing riposte to the tired Leonard Read
FEE / Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Networks propaganda version.

[http://crookedtimber.org/2011/04/16/i-pencil-a-product-of-
th...](http://crookedtimber.org/2011/04/16/i-pencil-a-product-of-the-mixed-
economy/#comment-355445)

See also, "I, Collateralised Debt Obligation":
[http://crookedtimber.org/2011/04/16/i-pencil-a-product-of-
th...](http://crookedtimber.org/2011/04/16/i-pencil-a-product-of-the-mixed-
economy/#comment-355404)

~~~
mseebach
That essay seems to shoot entirely past the mark. Yes, you can plan a forest,
you can plan several (but so can private actors, in a piece of fun trivia,
Nokia started out in that sector). Yes, you can plan a railroad (but so can
private actors). Yes, you can plan the implementation of mass education (hard
to argue that this wouldn't look very different without government, but also
hard to argue that the system is working very well -- and anyway, the pencil
predates mass education by several centuries).

But the fundamental point of "I, Pencil" (and the intellectual tradition it's
part of) is that you can't plan the economy at large. It's becoming
increasingly clear that you probably can't even plan a single company once
it's over a certain size (the essay seems to touch on that point, but doesn't
really follow through). It's not that private companies or markets are better
at planning, it's that the sheer inherent complexity of an economy is so large
that any kind of effective planning is impossible.

~~~
dredmorbius
And as I've pointed out at times previous when that claim's been made: there
are companies whose annual revenues exceed many nations.

WalMart has an annual income of $482 billion.[1]

That's more than the annual GDP of Poland, as measured by the World Bank, the
25th largest economy in the world, and of Belgium, the Philippines, Thailand,
Norway, Iran, Austria, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, South Africa, Hong
Kong, Malaysia, ... and 153 other countries (163 total) in the world.[2]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163564)

~~~
mseebach
I think the reason that can work is that (the vast bulk of) Walmart is
entirely dedicated to executing on a single, very well defined (and easy to
measure) task - their supply chain.

Unfortunately, few problems in the world are like that, and that's why large
companies (and governments) fail to address them effectively.

------
fastball
Pencils are great, but ever since I started using whiteboard notebooks, like
this[1] and this[2], I haven't looked back.

1\. [https://www.esquoia.com/](https://www.esquoia.com/)

2\. [https://wipebook.com/](https://wipebook.com/)

~~~
CAAD10
That's really cool, any downsides from your experience? Like does the
semipermanent ink smudge for left handed people? They say it doesn't... but
maybe

~~~
fastball
Yes and no. I've used some pens that dry basically instantly and I didn't need
to worry about smudging at all. However, I found that those pens were also a
bit harder to erase for minor corrections.

The pens I use now take a few seconds to dry, and so would probably be a
problem for leftys. For me, they work great, and I only occasionally smudge
something.

Here[1] is a scan from today. This page (and the entire notebook it comes
from) has been fully erased about 10 times. (I scan in all of the pages, and
then wipe 'em clean once I've filled the notebook).

Wiping can be a bit more time consuming than with a normal whiteboard. The
manufacturers claim all sorts of things will work to wipe an entire page, but
I've found that for best results you need to use cotton balls + pure acetone.

1\. [http://imgbox.com/RgLjEn3W](http://imgbox.com/RgLjEn3W)

------
woliveirajr
Anedoctal remarks:

1 - some people even collect pencils, and most of the collection is from
merchandise pencils, not commercial ones (source: one friend)

2 - pens are usually borrowed and never returned, even without knowledge of
the owner. Pencils, on the other hand, are hardly borrowed, and are almost
everytime returned to the owner (source: 2 unrelated friends)

------
mchahn
This seems like a rehash of the book Pencil from years ago. A large book about
only the pencil. While it was intriguing I could only make it through the
first 100 pages or so.

