The Simplest of Tools

The simplest of tools, a pencil. Who gives it much thought today? Humble though it may be, what would we do without this stick of wood and graphite that has allowed imagination to flower into pictures and words? Forget the amateurs like us and consider a few who had a real need. Leonardo da Vinci frequently sketched in pencil. Vincent van Gogh used only Faber pencils. During the Civil War pencils were standard issue for soldiers in the Union Army. Thomas Edison liked short pencils that fit neatly into a vest pocket, easily accessible for jotting down ideas and notes. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright began all his designs with pencil sketches. Vladimir Nabokov wrote everything he published in pencil, usually several times. John Steinbeck was obsessive about pencils—he used more than 300 in writing East of Eden. Ernest Hemingway favored cedar pencils for writing down thoughts and taking notes while a reporter during the Spanish Civil War. Johnny Carson had a habit of playing with pencils on The Tonight Show. His were specially made with erasers at both ends to avoid on set accidents.

It all began with the Roman stylus, which was sometimes made of lead, and the reason we still call the business end of a pencil the ‘lead,’ even though it’s been made of non-toxic graphite since 1564. This most common of tools has an interesting history, beginning with graphite, a crystallized form of carbon discovered in England in the mid-sixteenth century. It was first called plumbago, related to the Latin word plumbum for ‘lead.’ In the eighteenth-century a German chemist named it graphein from the Greek word meaning ‘to write.’ The word ‘pencil’ derives from the Latin penicillus meaning ‘little tail.’

It was the Italians who first thought of encasing the graphite in wooden holders. At first they hollowed out a stick of juniper wood, but in time a better technique was discovered and two wooden halves were carved, a graphite stick inserted, and the two halves then glued together. And then, French researchers hit on the idea of using a vegetable gum (rubber) to erase pencil marks. Until then, writers wiped out mistakes with bread crumbs. Sometime later in 1858, Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia patented the first pencil to have an attached eraser. The eraser-tipped pencil is an American phenomenon and most pencils produced in Europe and Asia for the domestic market are made without erasers. It was British developers who gave us the mechanical pencil, patented in 1822.

Mass production of pencils began in Nuremberg, Germany in 1662, but it was the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century that rocketed the pencil into every pocket and every home, boosting manufacture hugely. In his younger years before Walden and “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau and his father were famous for manufacturing the hardest, blackest pencils in the United States. Design-wise, the hexagonal shape of pencils is the easiest way to keep them from rolling off the table, and many are yellow because the best graphite comes from China, where yellow has long been associated with Chinese royalty. More than half of all pencils come from China. In 2004, factories there turned out 10 billion pencils, enough to circle the earth more than forty times. Americans use more than 2 billion pencils every year, most with erasers.

Some interesting trivia…A pencil will write in zero gravity, as well as underwater. A single pencil can draw a line thirty-five miles long, or write about 45,000 words. And this from The Pencil Pages…

LEFT-HANDED PENCILS—Do they exist?

This has been a subject of discussion among some of the contributors to these pages. The question is not really “Do they exist?” but rather “Are they deliberately made as ‘left-handed’ pencils?” Thus far, the only documentation I have encountered in favor of the legitimacy of left-handed pencils comes from literature I received from The Dixon Ticonderoga Company. On a page of pencil trivia facts is the following: “Is there such a thing as a left-handed pencil? The only difference between a left-handed pencil and a right-handed pencil is the orientation of the printing. On a right-handed pencil (standard) the imprint reads from the point to the eraser end of the pencil.”

While this does not directly answer the question, it does indicate that at least one manufacturer recognizes the existence of left-handed pencils. Also, in a reprint of a Dixon Ticonderoga advertisement is depicted a left-handed Ticonderoga pencil—though I have never seen one.

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Photographic thanks: The last photo is a favorite image from Logan’s photostream. Something tactile and wonderful about this photograph.

Handful from Levenger

During the two weeks spent in Louisiana last month, I enjoyed some time visiting with my favorite cousin and her family. Carolyne, or as I’ve long called her, the Cajun Queen, is one of us who takes pleasure in stationery goods, and stays on top of what’s available in the pen, pencil, ink and paper market through blogs and other websites. Carolyne has kept up with my frequent fountain pen hurrahs over the past year, but apart from a Pelikano Junior, remains loyal to her rollerball pens. She is a big fan of Levenger products and has on at least three occasions given me wonderful gifts from their online catalogue. What I’ve come to discover however, is that Levenger is quick to ‘retire’ items from their online menu. I have a pen case, an eyeglass-pen case and a mechanical pencil from Levenger-via-Carolyne, and none of the three are currently available on the Levenger website. Hard to understand when each of the three is an excellent, high quality product, as well as practical. Mmm…wait a second there; let me amend that to say that two of Carolyne’s gifts are practical, with the case for ten fountain pens more in line with the needs of pen nuts like myself. I have to doubt that a case for multiple fountain pens would be very useful for someone like my sister or best friend.

The last time in Baton Rouge Carolyne gave me what Levenger calls the 2mm Clutch Pencil. Lead with a 2mm diameter is huge, practically verging on the size of a carpenter’s pencil. I am no stranger to thick lead, since I regularly use a 0.9 Montblanc 167 mechanical pencil, but the difference in 0.9 and 2mm is considerable. Still, I like thick lead because it guarantees stability in writing; thick lead doesn’t suddenly snap in mid-sentence.

The Levenger Clutch Pencil is short, measuring only 4.5 inches, with a weighty 0.5 inch diameter. After writing with it for three pages, I switched to my regular 0.9 Montblanc and was surprised at the Montblanc’s lightness in comparison. The Levenger has a barrel of half brushed aluminum at the top, and natural wood at the bottom. I wish they had added a rubber grip above the point because the smooth wood does not allow for a secure hold, making the grip almost slippery. I also would ask that they lengthen the pencil at least an inch, but perhaps that’s my big, large-grip hand talking.

Unfortunately, as stated above, the 2mm Clutch Pencil—like the eyeglass-pen case and the fountain pen case—is no longer listed on Levenger’s website. Don’t quite know why this is so, but they know more than I do of sales and marketing.

Finally, a bayou-sized thanks to the Cajun Queen.

Turning Point

Once again I find myself late out of the starting blocks and all gaga about something that happened two years ago. Not that I’m closed off and isolated from what’s going on in the world around me, but more like a case of tunnel vision with

a particular product I like, and consequently paying too little attention to what’s new. I use a pencil (a mechanical pencil) throughout much of each and every day, yet for the past three or four years have given almost no thought to ‘mechanical pencils.’ Mine is one of those that works well enough to be always in the background and not very needful of special attention; pick it up, write with it and put it down again. It never fails, and it never ever makes me yearn for a different, or ‘new’ pencil.

It took me awhile to finally acquire that mechanical pencil, and I paid dearly for it, but have never for a moment regretted the money spent. It writes exactly as I want it to, and it simply does not cause problems. In a word, it is 100% dependable, which is exactly what one should expect in a Montblanc Platinum 167 mechanical pencil.

But there is one thing it doesn’t do. It does not automatically rotate the lead. It took Mitsubishi Pencil Co. Ltd. to come up with that.

Scrabbling around on my desk, I found an unfamiliar mechanical pencil and figured someone must have left it on my desk. In the middle of making some notes about something, without thinking I began scribbling on the paper in front of me. In only a couple of lines I had the feeling something about the pencil in my hand was very good. The grip and weight were comfortable, and the lines were spilling out very clearly. Stopping to look, I saw that the pencil was a Uni Kuru Toga 0.5.

Kuru Toga means something like ‘turning point’ in Japanese. The innovation with this mechanical pencil is the internal gear mechanism that automatically counteracts the natural blunting of the lead, by rotating the lead 9° with each contact the pencil makes with the paper. The lead makes a full rotation within forty contacts. This action assures that a clean, cone-shaped tip is maintained, which means a cleaner line. You can actually see the small gear move if you watch through the clear plastic grip.

I could grapple with trying to explain in more detail how this pencil does what it does so well, but a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Take a moment to watch the video below. Pretty much says it all.