Copyright 1990 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian

November 15, 1990

LENGTH: 664 words

HEADLINE: Books: A mark made on civilisation

BYLINE: By AFSHIN RATTANSI

BODY:

The Pencil: A History, by Henry Petroski (Faber, Pounds 14.99)

THE WORD for that greatest tool of demystification, the pencil, comes indirectly from the Latin word penis. Alas, Professor Petroski is no Levi-Strauss and has no time to linger on substructures, Freudian or otherwise, that perhaps haunt man's attitude to the ubiquitous writing instrument. After all, this is a history of only some 400 pages.

Petroski's feat could at first sight be likened to Barthes' The Fashion System, a large book that is seemingly just a tutorial on how to read Vogue magazine. But as Barthes' book is a metaphorical approach to the history of language, so is The Pencil actually a work on the history of technology, a guide to the field of engineering and, more subtly, a paean to free-market economics. It could just as well be about The Car, The Bridge or The Pinhead.

Not having done any research in China, Petroski's story begins on a dark and stormy night in 16th century England. A large oak tree in Keswick, Cumberland became uprooted, revealing an abundance of what was variously called black lead, English antimony, kellow or locally, wadt. It happened to be the purest graphite known in the world and its exceptional properties soon led to its being exported, under armed guard, throughout Europe. Increased availability ensured greater sophistication. From bare graphite did it come to be wrapped in string and then cedar wood. Supplies of Keswick graphite being finite, a technological leap was needed to conserve the resource. Just as our civilisation fought a trillion-dollar cold war for better frying pans, the Napoleonic war was to inspire the new Conte process, by which pencils are still made.

The big pencil firms were established early, Staedtler in 1662, Faber-Castell in 1760 and the book elegantly charts the process of transmogrification from innovator to family-owned business to cartel. You'll find out how they get the graphite into the pencil (clue: look at the hairline crack at the point), and did you know a single pencil can draw a line 70 miles long? That 14 billion are manufactured a year? That hexagonal pencils outsell round ones by 10 to one? You can make pencil marks permanent by washing them in skimmed milk? Venus pencils are named after the Venus de Milo and are a distinctive 'cracked green' colour only because of a defect that then became adopted by the manufacturers? Three out of four barrels have come to be painted an imperial shade of yellow because the Koh-I-Noor Company wanted to suggest that their pencils contained high quality Chinese graphite? Berol, to revive its fortunes after the success of Faber's new oriental source, named a pencil Mikado which then had to be changed, after Pearl Harbour, to Mirado. These were also yellow. Research shows that if you distribute pencils of yellow and green, those with the green will complain yellow is now a sign of 'pencilness'. Enliven your dinner party with a pocket-sized prop.

Unfortunately, the book has suffered at the hands of Faber editors. Duplicated sentences and Petroski's concern with 'the ultimate triumph' and, no doubt, penetration, of the American pencil tempt one to compare him to the advertising director at Berol. To demonstrate sharpness, he inserted a pencil point into the playing arm of a gramophone to hear a 'scratchy but stirring' repeated rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.

The Pencil intelligently argues the importance of the history of technology this alone makes the book required reading for any student engaged in making things. But Petroski, towards the end eulogising Milton Friedman, ultimately fails to see the prescient moral of the Keswick storm story. Sure, the innovative free market trailed thin lines of Cumberland graphite across the world, enhancing scholarship and leaving a mark on all civilisation. But today, it becomes, by analogy, a tale of all natural resources. There is no graphite left in Cumberland.