Pencils

The Underrated and Humble Pencil 1

 in Pencils  tagged BBC / BBC Radio 4 / Tim Harford by

George, a reader of Dave’s Mechanical Pencil blog and of Bleistift, has contacted me this morning and told me about an article Tim Harford wrote about the pencil. Not much later my wife contacted me about the same article. The article is part of the “50 Things That Made the Modern Economy” series.

In 2017 I was hoping that the pencil gets voted to be the “51st thing”. My blog post Vote for Pencil! might have added a few to the pencil, but in the end “credit cards” won.

An image of a humble pencil from an old blog post – to make this one less boring

Luckily Tim Harford, who made several ‘appearances’ on this blog in the past, has finally had a closer look at the pencil.

You can read his article Have we all underrated the humble pencil? on the BBC web site.

Just a few weeks ago I finished his book “Messy” (around $9 or in the UK around £7). Fascinating reading, like his other works.

His podcast More or Less: Behind the Stats is available for free.

Chung Hwa in the News 1

 in Chung Hwa / Pencils  tagged Chung Hwa / Made in China / Shanghai / 上海 by

Today’s edition of China Daily has a few very nice photos taken in Shanghai’s Chung Hwa factory.

Image © IC / China Daily

You can see all of the photos at

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201906/10/WS5cfdcd8ea310176577230489_1.html

You might also like the following blog posts about Chung Hwa

2012: Chung Hwa 6151
2012: Chung Hwa 6903
2019: Ordering Food? There’s a Pencil for that…

The image in this blog post has been taken from the China Daily web site. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

Ordering Food? There’s a Pencil for that… 1

 in Chung Hwa / Pencils / Seen in the wild  tagged Chung Hwa / Chung Hwa Drawing Pencil 101 / Made in China / seen in the wild / Shanghai / 上海 by

The Chung Hwa Drawing Pencil 101 is still the pencil of choice in Shanghainese Dim Sum Restaurants.

In the nicer dim sum places, like here in a branch of Sue Hsiao Liu, they are of course also nicely sharpened.

If you wonder where they come from or how many a restaurant would keep: here’s this branch’s ‘secret’ stash of sharpened Chung Hwas, ready for the customers.

If you want to read more about Chung Hwa pencils – here’s a selection of related blog posts form around the web.

The 101:

Other Chung Hwa Pencils:

Inside Faber-Castell’s Pencil Factory 4

 in Faber-Castell / Pencils  tagged BBC / Faber-Castell / Inside The Factory by

If you’re in the UK you might want to tune into BBC Two next Tuesday (19th March 2019).

The Inside The Factory series will visit Faber-Castell’s pencil factory. If you cannot wait you can watch a little preview on the BBC’s website.

The BBC seems to be rather keen on Faber-Castell. They also had some of ‘their guys’ working in the Faber-Castell factory for a previous BBC Two show and had a look at Faber-Castell and Staedtler for a previous Radio 4 programme.

I believe that showing the preview clip from BBC Two’s Inside The Factory in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.