[HN Gopher] Inside One of America's Last Pencil Factories (2018)
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Inside One of America's Last Pencil Factories (2018)
Author : perihelions
Score : 77 points
Date : 2025-04-07 11:43 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| smidgeon wrote:
| I was astonished to discover (via HN) that the pencil was
| invented (patented) in 1795, I has always assumed that it was
| from antiquity
| maxwell wrote:
| The ancients had reed/bamboo pens, which looked similar to
| modern pencils, though they were largely supplanted by quill
| pens by medieval times.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| They had charcoal too. There are charcoal graffiti in
| Pompeii.
| TZubiri wrote:
| The answer is 100% charcoal.
|
| Ancient pencils were made of charcoal, unless you have a
| very obtuse definition of what a pencil is.
|
| If you've never made a pencil at home out of charcoal, can
| you even say you are a free (wo)?man\?
| perihelions wrote:
| There were predecessors to pencils going back hundreds of years
| before that, with very similar capabilities. They used soft
| metals that streak when dragged across a surface, particularly
| silver and lead (Pb) (also the etymology of "pencil lead"); and
| sharpened these into narrow points. The modern pencil sort of
| iterated on those ideas. Soft graphite powder, in a wax binder,
| leaves a streak superior to metals; and encasing it in wood was
| the solution to the graphite composite's brittleness.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverpoint
|
| Here's a zoomable example by da Vinci (don't you agree they
| look awfully similar to pencil lines?)
|
| https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1860-0616-...
| julian_t wrote:
| My wife does silverpoint. A couple of bucks worth of fine
| silver wire in an old mechanical pencil, and you're set for
| years of drawing. Pretty much the cheapest way to do art (and
| it looks good, too)
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Seems like taking charcoal and binding it with cleaner wood
| to not soil your hands would be one of the first inventions
| after using charcoal to draw
| jcranmer wrote:
| A pencil is essentially a core of something that easily rubs
| off onto other things surrounded in a protective cladding of
| something that keeps it from rubbing off onto your hands; stuff
| like this has existed for centuries.
|
| There is essentially only one place in the world where graphite
| suitable for pencils naturally exists, and this wasn't
| discovered until the 1500s. Making it artificially from
| powdered graphite was first done in 1662, and the first process
| that approximates modern pencil construction was done in 1795,
| which is probably what you're calling the invention of the
| pencil.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| Henry Petroski wrote a great book about the history of the
| pencil. There used to be a mine in Southern England which
| contained pure graphite, that was found in the 16th century.
| That graphite could just be cut into sticks and made into
| writing implements. The modern pencil consisting of powdered
| graphite with a binder is a response to that mine being
| exhausted. So it's a substitute for a product that wasn't
| possible before that pure deposit was found.
| dambi0 wrote:
| At risk of pedantry and not to diminish the overall point. I
| think the graphite deposit was in Borrowdale which is in NW
| England. There's actually a pencil museum in Keswick, a
| nearby town.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ucyK2
| globnomulous wrote:
| Thank you for your service.
| pugworthy wrote:
| Given someone always posts these it's too bad every article
| can't just be set up with that kind of link. If there's a
| legal reason it can't be done I'd not be surprised though.
| compootr wrote:
| there's browser extensions that'll do it as well
| cameron_b wrote:
| The company featured - https://generalpencil.com/
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| Interesting, I (being pencil ignorant) wonder how they compare
| to the Japanese ones:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243716
| Palomides wrote:
| personal opinion, I like general's and regularly use some
| (especially the cedar pointe #1, and they also have some
| solid art pencils), but japanese pencils like uni mitsubishi
| and tombow are simply the best in the world
| globnomulous wrote:
| NYTimes, I don't care how much you pay photographer Christopher
| Payne and the rest of your photography staff (and contractors).
| No way is it enough. This is incredible work.
|
| A quick internet search tells me Payne -- who shot the article --
| specializes in large-format photography focusing on industry, and
| the samples on his website are breathtaking:
| https://www.chrispaynephoto.com/ Seems like the kind of thing
| that would be right up HN's alley.
| prawn wrote:
| From the relevant gallery on Payne's site: "Between 2016 and
| 2018, I made several dozen trips to the factory, photographing
| every aspect of production. A selection of these photographs
| was published in The New York Times Magazine in January 2018,
| with an accompanying essay by Sam Anderson."
|
| Several dozen!
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| The gallery: https://www.chrispaynephoto.com/general-pencil-1
| MisterTea wrote:
| I just saw that he is the one who photographed "New York's
| Forgotten Substations: The Power Behind The Subway" a great
| book on the old substations that powered the NYC subway system.
| Certainly an excellent photographer.
| gen220 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this! Pretty much every single gallery on
| his website is awe-inspiring, he's an incredible artist.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Amazing! Thank you for pointing out that he has such a
| beautiful website with his work on it
| ChiefEngineer wrote:
| I rolled my eyes reading your comment and went to the site to
| validate that your gushing praise was over the top. Boy was I
| wrong! His work is incredible!
|
| Too many photographers these days misuse/overuse the Bokeh
| effect and lose important visual information in their photos.
| They also use poor lightning and coloring, under the guise it
| is artistic when in fact it is a frustrating loss of the visual
| elements.
|
| Kudos to Chris Payne and his amazing work.
| royskee wrote:
| He had a coffee table book of photos come out not too long ago
| called "Made in America" that is really nice.
| daedrdev wrote:
| The truth is that a lot of current American manufacturing sees
| little investment / engineering towards the automation that could
| save it and is in a holding pattern where it will eventually be
| shut down or moved to a country with cheaper labor costs.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a completely financial thought process. Nobody is going to
| invest capital to make pencils 7% cheaper when I can dump money
| in monkey NFTs and yield a big short term gain. China has
| incentives to make pursuing those opportunities attractive.
|
| The glory days of manufacturing that people think of are their
| grandparents union jobs in the 1960s. The problem is the
| leadership people like Musk and Bezos are thinking more 1860
| than 1960 :)
| laborcontract wrote:
| Automation has been buoying it. We are producing as much as we
| have in the past but at 10% of the workforce.
| 9rx wrote:
| Aside from what happened in 2008, American manufacturing has
| effectively only ever grown by leaps and bounds, even while
| manufacturing jobs have cratered. It is quite apparent that
| American manufacturing has fully embraced automation where it
| is sensible to do so.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Seems like that already happened for industries susceptible for
| that. You don't need ai to automate a factory. You could do
| that by 1950. Labor costs have been cheap elsewhere for a while
| too. Plenty of manufacturing already left for these reasons.
| What remains stateside probably has some sticking factor that
| is highly context specific and impossible to generalize.
| absolutelastone wrote:
| Last time I visited a Chinese factory (which was before covid)
| it was heavily automated without much staff. They also did have
| a few foreign laborers who didn't speak the local language,
| ironically.
|
| I visited a US factory more recently,o and it was all about
| A.I., automation, and engineers (who maintained and operated
| the robots). Availability of cheap unskilled labor was not a
| relevant factor in the business.
| nudgeee wrote:
| This is known as Lights-Out Manufacturing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing)
| ty6853 wrote:
| No one knows how to make a pencil. --Milton
| Friedman
| m4rtink wrote:
| Might be interesting to compare with the Mitsubishi Pencil &
| Tombow factories in Japan. :)
| metalman wrote:
| for something purely American, and just as eduring there is
|
| https://www.edenkazoo.com/museum.php
|
| not just a museum, also a working factory
|
| which by pure accident I encountered, while traveling to see the
| GD,
| oflannabhra wrote:
| Musgrave Pencil Co [0], in Shelbyville, TN is one of the only
| other ones in the country I'm aware of.
|
| The biggest challenge for a lot of these is that they essentially
| require full-time machinists to keep the old machinery running,
| as the manufacturers typically have gone out of business decades
| ago. Tremont Nail Co [1] is another one I'm aware of, because
| they manufacture nails with old processes (cutting instead of
| wire).
|
| Which really tells the story of US manufacturing decline. When
| all supporting functions of an industry no longer exist, or have
| migrated to other countries, or have been surpassed by new
| technology, why should we romanticize and pine for an era that
| has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era
| and double down on the things we are best at?
|
| [0] - https://musgravepencil.com [1] - https://tremontnail.com
| robotnikman wrote:
| >Which really tells the story of US manufacturing decline. When
| all supporting functions of an industry no longer exist, or
| have migrated to other countries, or have been surpassed by new
| technology, why should we romanticize and pine for an era that
| has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new
| era and double down on the things we are best at?
|
| That is true, and most people do not romanticize working in a
| factory as their day job. However it is a good idea I think to
| keep some small amount of it onshore so the knowledge is not
| totally lost, in case whatever country who is doing the
| manufacturing decides to use that as leverage over your
| country.
| gwern wrote:
| [0]: ...they're having a "beat the tariff sale". 5% off
| everything.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > why should we romanticize and pine for an era that has been
| passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era and
| double down on the things we are best at?
|
| Because if something bad happens, be it a war, trade war with
| tarrifs or a pandemic, or just a stuck ship somewhere blocking
| transport, you're left without everything that you were once
| able to make, but can't make anymore.
| oflannabhra wrote:
| but going back to processes that are essentially "artisan" at
| this point, instead of re-shoring efficient automated
| manufacturing is the problem. Doubling down on making high
| volume pencils in an inefficient way is a fools errand when,
| if the stated goal is to manufacture all pencils domestically
| used through domestic firms is going to require an entire
| domestic supply chain on top of entirely new manufacturing
| processes and machinery.
|
| Trying to scale old systems is not going to solve the issue
| of not being able to make the things we want to own, if that
| is even a good or feasible goal in the first place.
| dingaling wrote:
| I think that's a bit of a straw man, onshoring doesn't
| demand that it re-implements 1910-style production.
|
| Maybe a new-tech pencil factory would only require 10 staff
| to run it 24/7. That's fine. Onshoring doesn't equate to
| full employment, but it does result in skills, knowledge
| and revenue remaining within a local OODA loop instead of
| being exported along with the actual production.
| kbolino wrote:
| Advanced economies are not so much living ahead in time as
| living at the top of a deeper production chain. The lower rungs
| on the production ladder do not cease to exist, though
| sometimes one of them is replaced by another, they just move
| around. And the biggest reason they are moved is to exploit
| different laws. One does not need to romanticize the past to
| want the work done under stricter laws at higher cost and with
| better pay and working conditions.
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