As established in many previous blog posts the Staedtler Noris is THE common pencil in British schools. It’s no surprise then that (stock) photos used by British newspapers heavily feature the Noris.
I guess I should add this sighting to the Noris in the Wild page.
The School Noris in the Wild Read More »
Today is Bleistift’s ninth birthday.
Well, since we’re on the topic of Mars Lumographs: it looks as if Mossad likes the Mars Lumograph ..at least in the BBC’s 2018 TV series of John le Carré’s 1980s spy novel The Little Drummer Girl.
Staedtler’s Mars Lumograph is a good choice: The pencil still looks quite similar to how it looked in the late 1970s / early 1980s, when the story takes place, and it would have been easily available to Mossad agents in Munich.
The images in this blog post are from the BBC series The Little Drummer Girl. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
Time for another stationery factlet: Staedtler was the first European manufacturer of mechanical pencil leads.
Staedtler made lead holders and leads for the lead holders for a long time. Below is a page from their 1935 catalogue.
When thinner lead diameters were introduced Staedtler was the first European manufacturer of these thinner leads – the kind of leads I would refer to as mechanical pencil leads.
Staedtler’s catalogues from the 1960s don’t seem to show pictures of these leads, but the catalogue from 1970 does – and it shows a very familiar lead container.
The Mars lead container still has the same shape today, but the plastic is now transparent. The opening of this lead container has the perfect diameter for refilling Mars micro mechanical pencils as you can see in the old video from my 2015 neox blog post.
I would like to thank Eberhard Rüdel for his detective work regarding my mechanical lead questions.
Time for another stationery factlet – the last one was a while ago, in March.
Since 1997, all shares in the Staedtler Group have been held by the Staedtler Foundation.
The Staedtler Foundation supports
Next time you use a Staedtler pen you know that your purchase wasn’t just a contribution to a company’s profits but did something for the common good.
The image shown in this blog post has been reused. It was first shown in my Staedtler Factory Visit blog post from 2016.
Stationery Factlets #5: The Staedtler Foundation Read More »
Today: a closer look at Staetdler’s handsome 925 15 mechanical pencil. You might remember it from a previous blog post from 2017.
It’s quite affordable and surprisingly light, maybe even too light for some users’ liking. In this video we’ll have a closer look at the 925 15.
Open in YouTube to watch in high resolution.
I bought the 0.3 mm version, so the video is about only covering this version, but this pencil is also available in 0.5mm, 0.7mm and 0.9mm.
The official price is ¥500 (~$4.40; £3.30; €3.75), but by the time you add shipping from Japan (when you buy from eBay) the price is a bit higher – still not expensive though.
Price and exchange rates: December 2017
More about Staedtler’s 925 15 Read More »