{"id":304,"date":"2022-12-01T09:52:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T09:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/?p=304"},"modified":"2022-12-13T11:19:43","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T11:19:43","slug":"mechanical-pencil-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/2022\/12\/01\/mechanical-pencil-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Mechanical Pencil Month"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>While digging around in the <em>Repertory of Arts<\/em> for Brunel patents, I came across a familiar design from the early 19th century. Granted to civil engineer John Isaac Hawkins (inventor of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Polygraph_(duplicating_device)\">polygraph<\/a>) and pen maker Sampson Mordan, patent number 4742 &#8220;for improvements on pencil-holders or port-crayons, and on pens, for the purpose of facilitating writing and drawing, by rendering the frequent cutting or mending the nibs or points unnecessary&#8221; is generally considered to be the very first design for a <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc1.b3140580&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=255\">mechanical pencil<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dated <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc1.b3140580&amp;view=1up&amp;seq=249\">December 20, 1822<\/a>, it means that this year marks the bicentenary of the mechanical pencil. In recognition of this unheralded anniversary, I hereby decree that December be named Mechanical Pencil Month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/graphography.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mordan_1822_patent_heading.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"465\" src=\"https:\/\/graphography.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mordan_1822_patent_heading-1024x465.jpg\" alt=\"Patent heading for Hawkins and Mordan's mechanical pencil 20 December 1822\" class=\"wp-image-303\" srcset=\"https:\/\/graphography.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mordan_1822_patent_heading-1024x465.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/graphography.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mordan_1822_patent_heading-300x136.jpg 300w, https:\/\/graphography.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mordan_1822_patent_heading-768x348.jpg 768w, https:\/\/graphography.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mordan_1822_patent_heading.jpg 1146w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>To mark the occasion, over the next twenty days I will attempt to post a daily pencil-related item. Think of it as a kind of metric advent calendar, as opposed to the usual duodecimal one (are advent calendars even a thing in the rest of the world?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This will be a challenge, not least because my collection of mechanical pencils is not exactly on a par with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/user\/dslinn300\/\">Dan Linn&#8217;s<\/a>, so expect some odd and obtuse objects (in advent calendar terms, the equivalent of a bell or a sheep). Besides which, I have not yet photographed anything for this project, so each day promises to be a surprise for me as well. Roll on Mechanical Pencil Month!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While digging around in the Repertory of Arts for Brunel patents, I came across a familiar design from the early 19th century. Granted to civil engineer John Isaac Hawkins (inventor of the polygraph) and pen maker Sampson Mordan, patent number 4742 &#8220;for improvements on pencil-holders or port-crayons, and on pens, for the purpose of facilitating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[37,120,118,102,116,117,31,49,119],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pencils","tag-19th-century","tag-bicentenary","tag-hawkins","tag-leadholder","tag-mechanical","tag-mordan","tag-patent","tag-pencil","tag-polygraph","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}