PENCILS 2: This is a continuation of a previous column highlighting facts about pencils, in honor of schools being back in session. These facts are from https://everyfactever.com/50-facts-about-pencils/:

— Authors like Hemingway and Steinbeck would only write their novels in pencil. Writing in pencil brought about an air of creativity it seems, as many more creative writers followed this pattern.

— Tiny flakes of graphite stick to the fibers on paper to create a pencil mark. These tiny tiny flakes are less than a thousandth of an inch – you would never notice them with a human eye.

— The largest collection of pencil sharpeners contains 8,514 sharpeners. These sharpeners are all different and the collection is owned by Demetra Koutsouridou.

— Soldiers would carry pencils with them when at war. This was to write home to loved ones, to use as a weapon and to leave messages for their fellow soldiers.

— During WW2 the pencil factory in Cumbria created pencils for POW’s to use to escape their camps. They were nicknamed ‘spy pencils’. The pencils were created with a small map concealed inside as well as a compass under the rubber. Charles Fraser-Smith, the creator of the secret spy pencils used in WW2, was said to be the inspiration for James Bond’s Q character.

— The ‘Spy pencil’ was such a Top Secret Government operation that the pencils were all created in the night when all of the workers were home in bed. Only a small number of people knew of the existence of the pencil, as the British didn’t want any information falling into the enemy’s hands.

— The creator behind the mass-producing pencil machines is John Dixon. In 1870, he used his lithography knowledge to create a machine that would output pencils at high speed, this machine could also cut out shapes ready for graphite to be set in the middle.