Pencil and Technology

Pencil and Technology

 

Immediately when this blog post was assigned I thought of the book “The Pencil. A History of Design and Circumstance.”  by Henry Petroski. This book discusses the complexities of the pencil and how this simple day to day object has been taken for granted. Some main points that he approaches are the invention of the pencil, its importance and the craft of making the pencil. He is able to approach the engineering of a pencil as something almost as complex as building a bridge. Just like many things in this world the pencil evolved as technology evolved. The “pencil” started as a brush made out of animal hairs then it became a thin chunk of graphite wrapped in string and finally it became the wood wrapped, graphite tube that we see today. Of course this book forced me to question the design of a pencil, for example why is it the shape of a hexagon?, and of course the answer to that is simple, so it doesn't roll and it adds grip. Naturally I searched for a pencil to analyze it further but I realized my main writing utensil that I use is my Apple Pencil. My respect for the pencil was already high but when I started to think about the Apple Pencil I was completely mind blown, to say the least. The exterior design of the apple pencil is dramatically updated from the original version, in which you can see the resemblance more to a pencil. The new design provides the user with a single flat edge to prevent rolling and a matte finish for better grip. The irony is we had a few hundred years to improve the design of the pencil but Apple still made the same mistakes. However, to give Apple some credit they have managed to almost perfectly replicate the feeling and nature of the pencil. Additionally they have almost eliminated the tedious nature of flipping the pencil to erase, instead you just double tap the pencil to switch from pencil to eraser.

Although I am a heavy advocate of the Apple Pencil it does lack one fundamental thing, the utility and customizability of the average pencil. Often a company will hand out a pencil with and advertise on it. Other uses are putting the birth information of a new born baby on pencils instead of cigars and even the infamous smencil. Apple pencils are far too expensive to place a logo on it and hand it out. Regardless we are not at the point where the electronic stylus has completely eliminated the average pencil so for now I will take advantage of both. 

 

    Attached is a link showing the complexities of the inner workings of an Apple Pencil. Although it is obvious that the Apple Pencil is more complex and a pencil it is still amazing how much technology they can fit into something the size of a pencil. I also attached two images showing the difference/similarities of digital “pencil” and a physical “pencil”.

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-pencil-powered-by-amazingly-tiny-tech/

images by Ainsleigh