You May Be Write

Of the 46 years I have been on this planet I have spent 35 of them in school. Before you assume I have the intellect of a push pin I need to point out a little less than half that time I was a paid employee at a school. I did not flunk over and over like that one distant cousin in everyone’s family who is never given sharp implements at the Thanksgiving get-togethers.

Other than being a student and an educator I also have spent large chunks of my time trying to be a writer. This means I have a notebook handy most of the time, one next to my official Dad Chair (the recliner in most homes that by state statute must be relinquished by whomever is sitting in it, be the sitter spouse, child or even hundred and ten pound Rottweiler when the father enters the room), one next to my bed, one in my shirt pocket at school, one in my jacket pocket and two in my backpack. I have them stashed all over the place in case I have a good idea. Note: I do not indicate these notebooks are used with any frequency I simply state they exist for that purpose.

OK, I told you all this as background for this statement: I love writing utensils. I buy pens for fun. I specifically asked for a particular kind of pen for Christmas. I have one pen I use for everyday run of the mill jotting down stuff at work. I have another pen which writes really well that I use for those times I am communicating with colleagues and friends or signing my name on things. I have another pen which is used for writing notes, ideas and short passages on my various writing projects. I can spend more time at the pen and pencil aisle at Office Depot than most men spend at the big screen television aisle at Best Buy. I am a pen/pencil geek. (Many would say I am a geek in a variety of ways, but we won’t go into that at this juncture.)

Just yesterday I learned something new about the history of the pencil. I already knew the word pencil came for the Latin word “pencillus” which means little tail. This really makes you wonder where those ancient Romans carried their pencils. I already knew pencils were made from graphite and the largest deposit of graphite in solid form was first discovered in 1565 at Seathwaite, England. I already knew that Nicholas Conte, an officer in Napoleon’s army, discovered a method of mixing powdered graphite, easier to find than solid graphite, with clay and firing it in a kiln to make a graphite rod suitable for pencil making. The new bit of information I learned is it was 150 years ago this very week (March 30th to be exact) the first ever patent of a pencil which had an eraser attached to it was granted.

Hymen Lipman not only had a name which was guaranteed to be made fun of by adults, kids and particularly verbal parrots but he is also the inventor of the pencil/eraser combo. My source on this is so tenuous that I am embarrassed to site it, but it was stated this outside the box thinker created the first dual use item in the history of human invention. His foresight made it possible for others to follow in his wake and give us clock/radios, keychain/flashlights, and Prince.

I know what you’re thinking. The pencil/eraser combo was not the first dual use thing. Granted Homo habilis used rocks for a variety of purposes, as bludgeons on small animals in order to eat them, as projectiles against larger animals to avoid being eaten by them and as hand puppets for telling simple stories about caveboy meets cavegirl, caveboy drags cavegirl by her hair to his cave and therefore gets dumped by cavegirl and caveboy gets cavegirl back by saving her from a rampaging mastodon. How do I know about this last use? There is a little known cave painting found near the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania showing the oldest known ancestor of Jim Henson doing Bert and Ernie routines with hunks of basalt and feldspar. This does not disprove the special place in history for the pencil/eraser combo. You have to remember rocks were not invented by man. We just perfected them in the mid-70’s when me made them pets.