Richmond- >Well, the fact that there is some anniversary for >pencils made in The United States of America (that is >what I take Mark Weider to mean; as most citizens of >the USA forget about the other American countries in >their rush to take over the world) is nothing special:
Finding myself hoist on my own petard (I'm usually the one taking people to task for that error of chauvanistic syntax) I shall attempt to redeem myself by claiming that the machine invented in 1812 was no doubt the first pencil-making machine in the Americas as a whole; and that brought about only because the US could no longer import its pencils from England, seeing as how we were at war and all. >I have to confess that pencils seem to have been >invented in England: This is indeed true (1560 is the date I've heard, but I suppose nobody really can pin it down that closely). There's a wonderful book by Henry Petroski called (of all things) "The Pencil", which should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of engineering. -- Mark Wieder [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
