The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Nov 10, 1992 - Technology & Engineering - 448 pages
Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.
 

Contents

What We Forget
3
Before the Pencil
24
Noting a New Technology
36
5
50
a Better Pencil?
67
Of Old Ways and Trade Secrets
79
In America
91
An American PencilMaking Family
104
Retrospect and Prospect
331
Appendix B A Collection of Pencils
346
91
361
Mechanization in America
367
The Point of It
374
Bibliography
385
Illustrations
408
Copyright

Acknowledging Technology
299

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1992)

Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. The author of more than a dozen books, he lives in Durham, North Carolina, and Arrowsic, Maine. 

Bibliographic information