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Happy International Pencil Day!
I hope you enjoyed it with all the traditional festivities.
Today is the anniversary of the day that changed the world.
This is the anniversary of the day in 1846 that the man of genius and vision, Hymen Lipman, was granted the patent for what we colloquially know as “the pencil.”
(Of course we are speaking of the “true pencil”, with an eraser on the end. The invention of the crude combination of graphite-and-wood bereft of the forgiving powers of rubber had been invented about fifty years before by one of Napoleon’s Mad Evil Scientists, but we focus on the more pure motivations of Mr. Lipman: capitalist profit).
Even though he sold his patent quickly, it was his foresight and ingenuity that took two things hitherto unconnected and married them together in a perfect balance. It is a little known fact that there is always exactly enough eraser on the end of a pencil to correct the mistakes potentially contained in the lead.
In other words, if your pencil is done and there is still eraser left, you missed something. Likewise, if you run out of eraser but still have lead, you obviously made a mistake about a mistake.
