reasie's review against another edition
2.0
There were interesting bits in it, but I felt like I had to sift them out like veins of pure graphite in sub-standard ore. He repeats himself a LOT. I wish he had told me about the pencil half as much as he repeated the phrase "The pencil is a paradigm for understanding engineering itself." (I swear that exact sentence appears no less than 80 times.)
I liked the description of old pencil technology. The victorian pencil factories made me wax steampunk, and part of me really wants to see if I can get ahold of some graphite stone and make my own 16th century pencil.
But, alas, that is not the author's doing, but his subject matter - despite him. I was really hoping for another fun page turner like "One Good Turn".
I liked the description of old pencil technology. The victorian pencil factories made me wax steampunk, and part of me really wants to see if I can get ahold of some graphite stone and make my own 16th century pencil.
But, alas, that is not the author's doing, but his subject matter - despite him. I was really hoping for another fun page turner like "One Good Turn".
edwardseditor's review
informative
medium-paced
3.5
I've just gotten through Henry Petroski's The Pencil. Petroski, if you're not familiar, is a Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at Duke University. He is also the author of this and several other books about the history of design and invention. The Pencil was published in 1989, and it drew from earlier writings by Petroski for a couple of different journals mentioned on the copyright page (Across the Board and American Heritage of Invention & Technology). The book traces the history of the pencil from pre-pencil tools such as quills and small brushes, to the graphite-holder described by Konrad Gessner. to the '80s, which was then the modern day. Some elements of the book are a bit out-of-date; several pencils Petroski mentions as market-dominant in the book's time are no longer made. Of the standard yellow No.2 pencils he lists—the Eberhard Faber Mongol, the Eagle Mirado, the Venus Velvet—only the Dixon Ticonderoga still exists in manufacture (and in a quite diminished form, pencil enthusiasts are quick to tell you). Petroski correctly guesses that high-quality drafting pencils would be made obsolete by the computer and accompanying CAD software. He does not anticipate that regular writing pencils would also dive in popularity in the face of computerized notes and memos, leading to a dive in quality as pencil-makers race to the bottom of price. (This time of year, you can find pencils sold by the dozen for a penny in some "Back-to-School" sales. You should not buy these, but they can be found.)
Petroski gives the background of a lot of big names in pencils: Faber, Staedtler, Conté, Dixon, and a few less expected names: Henry David Thoreau, who, I learned reading this, was a pencil-maker by trade. He, along with his father, produced some of the best pencils made in America at the time. Hollywood actor Armie Hammer also, we find, has a familial tie to the world of pencils, as his great-grandfather Armand Hammer was involved in a daring (well, perhaps not as daring as some) caper to smuggle the secrets of pencil making out of Nuremberg, Germany to Lenin's USSR.
Aside from these anecdotes (some of which get mentioned in passing, then repeated, in greater depth, as new information, probably as an artifact of the book not being written in one piece) Petroski looks at the history of the pencil almost exclusively as the history of pencil design and engineering. While he brings a lot of good lessons out of this (new technology first develops before the engineering and mathematical models used to study and improve it; engineering new technologies cannot change the world without considering business, which is the other half of industry; trade secrets are good for business but bad for technological development; changes in supply of raw materials force changes in technology) a book titled simply The Pencil: A History might have included more than a passing mention of the history of pencil use: how the invention and increased availability and quality and variety of pencils changed literature, art, journalism, correspondence, etc. Petroski talks a little about learning handwriting, a little about drafting, and a little about carpentry and that's pretty much it, as far as what happens to pencils after they've been made. Also, strangely, while the history of the pencil sharpener is given its own chapter, the history of the eraser, an arguably more important pencil-adjacent technology, gets roughly one sentence, in which the obvious-in-hindsight origin of the term "rubber" is stated.
If you get a chance to read this book, I'd advise against reading it all in one go, as Petroski's writing, while informative, isn't especially gripping or smoothly composed. While I was hoping for something a bit more comprehensive from a history, what was there was good. 7/10
Review originally published in A Running Commentary
Review originally published in A Running Commentary
ericwelch's review against another edition
5.0
Henry Petroski, that most excellent of engineering writers, uses the pencil as a metaphor for the study of the engineering process in his first-rate history The Pencil.- A History of Design and Circumstance.
The pencil represents innovation, ingenuity and inventiveness.
The problems facing a pencil engineer are similar in concept to those of an engineer building a bridge. The pencil lead must be created in such a manner so that it will be strong enough to remain sharp as long as possible and strong enough not to break. This requires special mixtures of clay and graphite, proper baking temperatures and pressures. The bridge engineer must also seek the proper balance between competing materials and methods of construction for the best balance of price and strength (see Petroski's other book on bridge building and accidents, To Engineer Is Human: The Role Of Failure let Successful Design TA174.P474 1992); it is not always easy to predict how combinations of materials will perform.
The common inexpensive pencil we take for granted actually requires an exacting manufacturing process to create and uses many different materials from around the world. "The lead... might be a proprietary mixture of two kinds of graphite, from Sri Lanka and Mexico, clay from Mississippi, gums from the Orient, and water from Pennsylvania. The woo den case would most likely be cut from western incense cedar from California, the ferrule possibly of brass or aluminum from the American West, and the erase perhaps manufactured using a mixture of South American rubber and Italian pumice stone."
Actually, the "lead" pencil of today contains no lead, not even in the paint on the outside. The writing material is a mixture of:: graphite, clay, and other ingredients. The most famous graphite came from a single source in the British Isles, and it was so valuable that workers mining the material were required to strip down as they left the mine through several vaulted and locked rooms to prevent theft. The depletion of the mine was a source of great consternation until substitute materials were found.
The pencil got its name from the Roman fine-pointed brush called apenicillus. It was created by inserting a tuft of animal hairs into a hollow reed, later called by the diminutive penis, Latin for tail, hence a little tail used for drawing fine lines.
So, through the history of this little tool, Petroski celebrates the engineer as the innovator and amalgamator of the practical and the theoretical.
The pencil represents innovation, ingenuity and inventiveness.
The problems facing a pencil engineer are similar in concept to those of an engineer building a bridge. The pencil lead must be created in such a manner so that it will be strong enough to remain sharp as long as possible and strong enough not to break. This requires special mixtures of clay and graphite, proper baking temperatures and pressures. The bridge engineer must also seek the proper balance between competing materials and methods of construction for the best balance of price and strength (see Petroski's other book on bridge building and accidents, To Engineer Is Human: The Role Of Failure let Successful Design TA174.P474 1992); it is not always easy to predict how combinations of materials will perform.
The common inexpensive pencil we take for granted actually requires an exacting manufacturing process to create and uses many different materials from around the world. "The lead... might be a proprietary mixture of two kinds of graphite, from Sri Lanka and Mexico, clay from Mississippi, gums from the Orient, and water from Pennsylvania. The woo den case would most likely be cut from western incense cedar from California, the ferrule possibly of brass or aluminum from the American West, and the erase perhaps manufactured using a mixture of South American rubber and Italian pumice stone."
Actually, the "lead" pencil of today contains no lead, not even in the paint on the outside. The writing material is a mixture of:: graphite, clay, and other ingredients. The most famous graphite came from a single source in the British Isles, and it was so valuable that workers mining the material were required to strip down as they left the mine through several vaulted and locked rooms to prevent theft. The depletion of the mine was a source of great consternation until substitute materials were found.
The pencil got its name from the Roman fine-pointed brush called apenicillus. It was created by inserting a tuft of animal hairs into a hollow reed, later called by the diminutive penis, Latin for tail, hence a little tail used for drawing fine lines.
So, through the history of this little tool, Petroski celebrates the engineer as the innovator and amalgamator of the practical and the theoretical.
More...