Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - No. 2 Pencils

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by writer/comedian Dana Gould (The Simpsons, Stan Against Evil, 'Hanging With Doctor Z') for a look at why no. 2 pencils are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Number 2 Pencils. Known for being common. Famous for being erasable. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Number 2 Pencils are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone, because I'm joined by the wonderful Dana Gould. Dana Gould is an amazing television writer. His credits include The Simpsons and Parks and Recreation

and his own show Stand Against Evil. He's also an amazing stand-up comedian. His most recent album is called Mr. Funny Man, available from the Kill Rockstars label. And I want to make sure you know about an amazing YouTube show he has been making. It is called Hanging with Dr. Z. Dr. Z in this case is Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes, but this is a world where Dr. Zaius hosts a 1970s-style late night show. It's one of many show links. I extra, extra recommend it. It is a blast. It's got a band. It's got legitimately huge guests. The advertisements

are maybe my favorite part. Anyway, as you can hear, Dana is busy. I am so glad he came by this show to talk about Number Two Pencils. One extra note here. The other note is that this episode sounds good. All the audio totally works. It's all pleasant to listen to. The audio will switch to Zoom internet phone call audio. It's not a problem. It's a good podcast. You'll enjoy it. I just find some people like to get a heads up. So here is that heads up. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Chicory peoples. Acknowledge Dana recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva

and Keech and Chumash peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about number two pencils. This is the top patron chosen topic for July, the top pick from you folks. Thank you to Jesse Eldridge and also to Norm from Cheers for the suggestion. And I'm thrilled we got so specific. We made it a number two pencil, which you also may know as HB in your country.

We'll talk more about that later. Anyway, there's an amazing show in just this one pencil type, plus all the pencil history that led up to it. So please sit back or take a walk to the pencil sharpener, because that is the main way you get to choose to stretch your legs during grade school. Even if you go to the bathroom, it's like weird if you go too often. You know, pencil sharpener's normal. Anyway, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with the great Dana Gould.

I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Dana Gould, it is so good to see you and talk to you. And if you don't mind, normally I start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Before that, I have a family history question for you if that's not weird i do you this podcast is over destroy the tapes destroy the tapes um but i i was curious if you have any relatives or ancestors who were involved in the pencil sharpener business, any Goulds who were doing that? I don't.

Nothing comes to mind. It sounds very – it sounds a little too high-minded for my branch of the family. Cool. My branch of the family is prison guards, policemen, and telephone company linemen. Okay. guards, policemen, and telephone company linemen. Okay. So before those were needed, it was probably, we need a guy to lift this.

That was what they would call it. I've heard some of that about mine as well. Yeah, because I was researching, and there's one of the early American pencil sharpener companies was Gould and Cook in Leominster, Massachusetts. You know what? It's worth looking into. It's worth looking into because I am from Massachusetts. And I was like, maybe Charles Gould of these sharpeners, but who knows? Now that's just a thing for you to wonder about. I'm sorry. It's funny. I've often described my family, my dad specifically, as Archie Bunker without the elegance and sophistication. And my and my my brothers followed suit. But purportedly, my grandfather, my dad's dad, who I didn't really know, I I murdered him when I was very young.

murdered him when i was very young joke is stolen from my friend bill brought us it was just too good to not my friend bill is the true killer he must be brought to justice my friend bill brought us had a great joke because i don't remember my mother i was very young when i killed her but uh but my but support supposedly my grandfather was a very sort of sharp-witted elegant kind of dude so who knows there might be there might be pencil sharpening money back in there well amazing i i feel like i've left you with a mystery i'm sorry uh but but beyond that i generally number two pencils it seems like you, you know, as a professional writer, you were connected to them. You showed me a bundle of them.

Yes. And as a yeah, as I was connected to them as a professional writer, as a as a parent, my house is full of them. And as a public school, as a as a public school student before that, before computers, I had tons. Oh, yeah. had tons oh yeah i did the first thing i thought of i thought of the enterprise from star trek because oh if i am doodling with a number two pencil i always and this goes back to third grade fourth grade i will draw a horizontal line and then i will hatch it down and do the saucer part of the enterprise and then do the back of the enterprise. And it's, it's almost like an automatic reflex. Now I don't even think about it. Like that's what I doodle. Oh, that's great. Yeah. I, are you a big doodler? Cause I'm,

I'm not, but I can draw the enterprise, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not, but if I do, yeah, I will just, I just draw the Enterprise. Because I assume that the ladies dig it. You know, it's like if a lady the chick sees a doodle pad full of Star Trek ships, they're like this one. The raw magnetism of it, right? How do they... The Bondian allure.

Yeah, exactly. They know where their bread's buttered yeah well and since since you mentioned school before computers they they had added some computers when i was in grade school and we were still like drowning in number two pencils it was still it's just i think it's the automatic go-to in at least American schools, maybe all schools. Like it's, it's this specific model. It's like, Oh, if you don't have one of those, you're not functional. You can't even write. Yeah. Well, you needed them also for, and you needed them also for SATs to do the little, yeah. Oh, to fill in your ovals. Right. Your whole future suddenly rides on it. Like you've got the right kind, right? Really does. Yeah. I was always afraid that I it. Like you've got the right kind, right? It really does. It really does.

Yeah. I was always afraid that I was doing the right answer in the wrong line and then I would get a zero. Yeah. Those were such a crisis, all those tests. Just why? Why do we have to do that so early? But we did. Awful. Yeah. I know. I'm going through it with my kids right now. Oh, yeah. And I try to explain to them, it's okay. It's not as important as it sounds. You're going to be fine. In the year of COVID, I have an 18-year-old, a 17-year-old, and a 12-year-old. And my 18-year- old is like a person now, you know, she's starting, she's starting college in the fall. She's, she's incredibly bright.

She's going to Berkeley as a microbiology environmental ecology major. So it's like, well, you'll work. You know, she's basically going to study arresting climate crisis. Like she's going to school to yell at you for using plastic bags. But she's but for the summer, just to have a job, she's driving DoorDash. Oh, right. And I will I will often go with her just because she's so funny. And she'll literally like, oh, it's a sad meal. What's a sad meal?

It's like a salad and fries from Wendy's to a woman alone in an apartment. Oh, man. Right. Oh, yeah. That is a sad meal. Yeah, it's like having a police scanner for food. It's exactly right. We had to deliver a waffle cone to somebody, and it was like getting the Holy Grail.

So we go to Hollywood Boulevard. We go to the Kodak Center. We find the Cold Stone Creamery. We get a waffle cone. Then we have to drive it to west hollywood through through town tick tock because it's ice tick because it's ice cream so tick tock my friend it's you know and then you get the bernie sticker on the door but no tip man yeah and that you know if if you're one of the listeners you're one one of the good ones. But I can't imagine ordering ice cream through a delivery service like that.

If you can't afford to tip, go get your own ice cream. Because you know what's cheaper? A gallon of ice cream from the store. And nobody has to feel like they're in the movie Speed, where they have like beat a a system to get it to you terrible get a gallon of seal test and you can eat for a week is seal test low was that massachusetts or is that national oh i don't know what seal test is it was it was the ice cream in massachusetts and i realize now what a horrible name sealed that's. We want to evoke animal testing with a delicious taste of ice cream. Well, and I think from here we can get into the first chunk of the information about pencils.

Because on every episode. A nation wait. No, no. about pencils because the uh on every episode they should wait no no on the on every episode our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics and this week that's in a segment called they come numbering just as fast as they can because every girl crazy about a stats obsessed man and that name was submitted by Mike Brazil. And we have a new name for this every week.

Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SipPod on Twitter or to SipPod at gmail.com. And this is a big number section this week. We got a lot of them. First number here is 7.5 inches. And that is the typical length of a number two pencil. 7.5 inches. The last three quarters is the eraser and the ferrule,

which is the metal piece that holds it. But that's the size before we start sharpening them and so on. 7.5 inches. Yeah, it's just kind of where they're at. Right. I don't know how they settled on that. It feels kind of random. They don't happen nowadays because pencils are so cheap and plentiful,

but there used to be things called pencil extenders, which is where you've sharpened your pencil down so it's hard to hold now because it's so short like it's like a cigarette case almost like a cigarette holder yeah it's like that yeah so that used to be for like prolonging the life of super valuable pencils was a pencil extender weird different time yeah you'd see hobo like hobos going through the trash for a pencil stub to write their hobo memoir. To write like Apple's five cents on something because it's the depression. Here's a topic for a future show. Hobo code. Hobo code. Hobos would have codes for like, this house will give you money. This house will give you money this house will feed you this house that i heard about it through john hodgman but i didn't know if he was kidding or not

i didn't know if it was real no he's one the fact that you heard about it through john hodgman is the least surprising thing i've ever heard and uh and uh no it's true it's true oh that's awesome great i'm glad i read about so many codes i was like i hope this is real because it's going in my brain here we go and yeah that's great yeah hobo code is fascinating we had a thing at this at the simpsons we we were fascinated by hobos. And we had a thing that the great George Meyer set up as a rule that when you put hobo into a script, you had to follow it with the parenthetical with bindle. That was mandatory. And that was mandatory. And one day we just had a hobo walks into the room and George went, guys, I don't know what effing planet you guys are from, but I all writing and the script is on a big monitor in the room. And I walked into the room and I looked at the monitor and it said hobo as a dialogue slug. And then below it in parenthetical, it said all business.

Just collapsed. just collapsed man and that's secret like it's no one watching the show knows it's just on the page for for us yeah hobo all business all business Yeah. Hobo. All business. All business. That destroyed me. No time for a Bindle. Yeah. Look, let's just get to this. It's amazing. Well, the next number here is 21. And it turns out that 21 is the number of different grades of pencil because number two is a grade and in the u.s we only really have one two three and four but in the rest of the world they have 21 grades

and the number two pencil lines up with hb in most of the rest of the world so if you ever see hb on a number two pencil that's like an international version of that right yeah we are our numerical pencil grading system is like a refusal refusal to go metric a little bit yeah yeah yeah so that's just like going on with the grades of these and hb is right in the middle of the world scale and that means that it's a medium amount of hardness and a medium amount of darkness okay yeah so it's it's kind of a happy medium goldilocks pencil because the number three pencil is harder than a number two pencil so a number one pencil must be like oatmeal yeah the lead actually drips out of the pencil slowly in a string it's right you have to deliver it in your car really quickly

or it melts otherwise yeah exactly exactly it's like yeah it's the doordash ice cream of pencils yeah and and we're kidding and that's accurate we'll have links about it it's all it's all very technical and kind of visual so we'll link about it but but yeah these pencils vary in their hardness and their darkness. And, you know, number two seems to work. It's not one that people are like, this is terrible, I need something else. That's right. And the next number here is 1972.

That is the year that Scantron technology was invented. And according to EdTech Magazine, there had been technology to score multiple choice tests since the 1930s. But Scantron was the first like widely used system. And according to Mental Floss, the way Scantron tech works is something called optical mark recognition. So it shined a beam of light through the paper and then whatever bubbles blocked the light, that's what it recorded. So that's part of why they wanted to like know exactly what pencil you were going to do so they would know what shadow you would get oh wow and then

yeah and that's why it was like fill in your oval completely yeah because that could apparently they're more advanced now and they can do double-sided now but back then it was like the light has to hit this exactly like get the right pencil to it right right and yeah an incomplete oval could end your career right right every ivy league school's president will come by and tell you that you have failed right and you know that was crushing one of the the main elements of the the stop the steel paranoia is incomplete ovals oh yeah that's what they're doing down in arizona says scanning for incomplete oval on of of their theories that's got to be the most charming most positive one right like that that's gotta that's that's almost hanging chads which kind of happened you know

that's fine right yeah i'm waiting for a team of psychics was dispatched today right i always like the the idea of a team of psychics like they're all yeah do they do their brains like stack or something like is it is it that they all have to touch foreheads and it's more powerful i don't get it yeah it can't be it can't be a very chatty van ride you know it's like just occasionally somebody will turn and go yeah well just a couple more numbers here one of them is 1890 1890 is the first year when a major brand sold yellow pencils because number two pencils it's not like a rule, but they tend to be painted yellow. And there's an amazing book that's a source for a whole bunch of this episode by

Henry Petrosky. It's called The Pencil, A History of Design and Circumstance. And Henry Petrosky is a professor of both engineering and history at Duke University. Oh, yeah. So this was so in his wheelhouse. It was insane. Yeah. I've read, it's an amazing like 350 page book about pencils. It's so good. Yeah. But I bet it is because they are one of those things like, Oh yeah,

we didn't need these. Yeah. Yeah. And he, he says that there were yellow pencils before this, but a company called the LC Hartmuth company in Austria rolled out a pencil called the Coe newer.Noor, and it's named after the Koh-i-Noor diamond that's part of the British crown jewels.

Right, yeah. And so they wanted to, like, emphasize that it's special. And before 1890, most pencils were a dark color, like black or dark red or purple. And so they made it bright yellow. It was a huge hit. And then other companies copied them from there. So yeah, like their first big sales event was the 1893 exposition in Chicago, like the World's Fair sort of event there.

Like this is a turn of the century development that they're yellow. Yeah. But I do like that, that it just went and people are like, yeah, okay. Yes. Pencil should be yellow. And it was just like the sort of hundredth monkey realization like nope okay we got it right yeah it's just like oh this is suddenly what they are now permanently great we had to make all these decisions it was like at one point we're like we're gonna get our milk from cows and like you know not dogs it's like they all make milk. Also, and in a few other countries, it's not common to have

yellow pencils and it's common to have a green pencil in Germany or Brazil. Really? And to have a red pencil in Australia. They just, for some reason, didn't get on board with the rest of us with the yellow pencil. I'm assuming it went from green pencils, went from Germany to Brazil with the Nazi high command when they fled after World War Two. Exactly. Brings the pencil. Brings the pencil. It blows their mind.

There's a green pencil. Yeah, that's like breadcrumbs for the investigators, too. They should have switched. Right. Like, why not assimilate all the way, you know? Yeah, very clumsy. assimilate all the way, you know? Yeah, very clumsy. Well, and the last number here, this is 100,388. So slightly over 100,000, 100,388.

So that is the word count of the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. And that book got used as an experiment for how long a number two pencil lasts. Someone transcribed the book to test how many words they could write with a number two pencil. And they got down to the end of the book and they were at the end of the pencil? Yeah. And apparently they were sparked by an issue of Discover Magazine in 2007 that had a factoid that said, one number two pencil can write 45 000 words but according to npr this had never been tested and so a guy in pennsylvania tested it npr also says i'm hoping he was either in prison or somehow housebound like he was like he wasn't surrounded by kids going dad we're hungry oh yeah and do it important work well the other so ed pr talked to him and the other thing he said is that

he recruited volunteers to help him initially and then everybody quit so it was just him at the end which is that surprising yeah yeah or he tried you know he had a room full of monkeys also doing oh yeah infinite number of monkeys also doing it. Oh, yeah. Infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of pencils. Great. But he says, and I assume they passed it around, they used one Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil. They transcribed the entire book, over 100,000 words, and then still had 1.219 inches of pencil left. That's a lot of pencil still.

Yeah, that's an actual thing. Over an inch. It's not like a total nub or something. Grip of that. But yeah, so this guy found out if you use one number two pencil and are, I guess, careful, you can write more than 100,000 words or write an entire copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Did anyone tell him, you know, you can buy a copy down at the store what there's a really funny story about stephen king wrote the book under the dome big book of

his about a city that wakes up one day to find that it's under a dome and they don't know why and uh when he finished the book like his daughter or somebody said find that it's under a dome and they don't know why and uh when he he finished the book like his daughter or somebody said like oh it's just like the simpsons movie and he went what really yes he wrote that after the simpsons movie yes and he wasn't aware of the simpsons he was like what i because i've heard of that book i truly assumed it was the other way around like i thought okay or i'm sure they're probably concurrent because it's too big of a book but i think that like had the idea at the same time wow he was very funny about i mean we

had him on the show he's a delightful person. And he was very funny about it. Yeah, the Simpsons movie was 2007 and Under the Dome was 2009. I'm not a King fan. I thought it was just the other way around. It was amazing. No, it wasn't. It wasn't. He was very funny about it. And he was just like, what?

He's like, and he's just like, what? Like his new book is Frostilicus or something, you know, like some like, come on, man. Yeah. Don't a large lad. Keep up. Yeah. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec.

I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty.

This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun

or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, hey, man, I'm going to be thinking about that a lot. But there are two main takeaways for the main episode, and I think we can get into them. The first one is takeaway number one. A number two pencil's quote unquote lead is actually carbon and clay mixed together.

Really? I thought it was graphite. Yeah, and graphite's a form of carbon, so that's one of the things. Okay, all right. I still get the point. I still get the point. It's true, yeah. You'll be in the bonus round and everything? Yeah, yeah. But there's a bunch of sources here.

That Henry Petrosky book, also a book called Paper by journalist Mark Kurlansky. So we have pencil and paper. And then The Atlantic and Mental Floss as well. Yeah, people call that stuff that writes in a pencil, pencil lead. That's what I've kind of always heard it called. But it is graphite. And The Atlantic says graphite is the stablest form of the element carbon. So carbon and lead, separate elements, very different. And the Atlantic also

covered a team at Stanford that did an experiment in 2014 where they tested whether you could turn graphite into a diamond. And their analysis suggests you can because it is carbon you just have to do the most pressure of any kind of carbon to turn you know the equivalent of pencil lead into a diamond okay that makes sense yeah so you can make a ring out there folks it'd be a great it'd be a great smuggling a great smuggling tool oh to smuggle eventual diamonds? Like you sneak them through that way? Yeah, just like a caravan of tanker trucks full of pencils. Right. Well, and it turns out there are two main reasons we got that name pencil lead for it. And this book paper by Mark Kurlansky is a really good source. One of the reasons is that there were a few very ancient Romans who used lead like a pencil.

They would sometimes write on papyrus using a metallic piece of lead. And so just the whole thing is a piece of lead, and that's called a lead pencil. And we also got the name pencil from the Romans. They had the Latin word penicillum for a writing brush. So then it came from there. Oh, it's weird that we didn't get penicillin from that. But we did get penicillin. Yeah, that's what's weird that we didn't get penicillin from that but we did yeah that's what i thought it sounds exactly like penicillin nope yeah but uh and then the other reason is the first graphite mining happened in the 1500s and people just didn't know enough chemistry they assumed it was some weird kind of lead that

they'd never seen. Oh, okay. The first big discovery was in Britain, and Mark Kurlansky says, quote, a large oak tree was uprooted in Cumberland, and an odd black mineral was discovered clinging to its roots. This led to the digging of Eaglin's first graphite mine and the development of the pencil, end quote. Wow. Okay. Yeah, so 1565, they found the and now and now that we have better ways

to get graphite it's not a problem but there used to be a huge like push to find graphite like it was like finding a super valuable natural resource in the ground like gold like the older minerals or something oh interesting yeah yeah and we won't we won't get way into it, but Henry Petrosky's book has a story about a guy looking for gold in Siberia who accidentally found the largest graphite load ever found and then made a fortune selling it and was like a graphite baron for a while. That's hilarious because you're like, there's graphite, graphite. graphite um but yeah and the that british discovery in 1565 according to mental floss quote early chemists weren't exactly sure what the useful gray substance actually was they assumed it was some sort of lead and the term pencil lead came into use end quote all right so they just messed up it worked yeah and so graphite is this this resource that now is it feels very plentiful

because of modern production but also because now unlike the first graphite pencils now we mix it with clay and clay is a substance that like stretches out the graphite we have right and then also it still draws a line it's like cutting cocaine with baby formula it's yeah pretty much yeah suddenly suddenly we're the villains in a miami vice episode what if like what if the people at ticonderoga or whoever it's a bunch of very normal pencil makers and then one weird guy with razor blades it It's like, you don't need to have this aspect, man. We could just do the process. There's the Tony Montana of pencil.

Well, once you try my pencils, man, you're not going to go with their pencils. The first box is free. I peddle them at playgrounds like the scar is drawn in pencil and then you can just erase it if you're like it's fine actually it's just flip it around and dig it it right it writes itself but yeah and the the mixing with clay is where we really got these grades of pencil and this pencil scale, because when you're using graphite, you just kind of get a kind of line. But once you're specifically measuring clay to balance it out and to change the composition, then you get grades.

And that's how the number two pencil was created. That's how we got it. Excellent. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Excellent. And that number three is harder because it has more clay and it's all just how much clay you put into graphite. But I never think of it as having clay. It just looks black.

Like it just looks like it has graphite. Right. And that's it. Interesting. Interesting. And the other the other main takeaway of the episode, we can get into it because it's how this happened. Takeaway number two. The modern number two pencil came from Napoleonic France and from Henry David Thoreau. Really?

Yeah. There's two people to know about here, and one of them is the very famous Massachusetts writer, Henry David Thoreau. And then the other is a French guy that I think nobody's ever heard of but he's from napoleonic times and france wow how did thoreau figure into this it turns out we'll we'll kind of get to him because he's second but he he comes from a family of pencil makers like he was born into the pencil business in massachusetts there wow and i just figured he was a writer i didn't know how he got to that cabin and everything. Hanging out in the woods.

Here he comes. There he goes. I like they can't see your cat. So it sounds like Thoreau came and went, which is great. But yeah, the first person here is a frenchman named nicholas jacques conte and he lived from 1755 to 1805 he before the french revolution was a painter and then once the revolution happened he said now i'm a scientist i'm gonna like come up with stuff that helps republican france i love the republic like a painter will get drafted but a

scientist i think oh he's like i'm a i'm a painter right i'm i'm whatever job's important and not on the front lines that's what i exactly exactly i faked his i faked insanity to get out of the kiss army. But that's the number one thing they want, man. Big mistake. No. It's true. It's true.

I was a fool. I did my hitch. Yeah. Was it scary being on the last helicopter out of detroit or was that a normal situation for you people clinging to the skid i don't want to listen to new wave it's too late the cars and blondie are at the gates. Right. That would be a great cartoon, actually. Yeah, we should get some pencils. There we go. Look at that.

Look at that. That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, weirdly speaking of aviation, so this guy, when he became a scientist, Conte, his first move was to get into hot air ballooning. He was like, I will figure out how hot air balloons can be part of Napoleon's army and help him win battles and aerial scouts and stuff. And that ended up being hard because he lost an eye in a hydrogen explosion. And in most pictures of him, he has an eye patch. And so it was pretty wild.

Right. But also in the meantime, he was like, any other science experiment you want done, I'll just try to figure it out. French government ended up asking him to try to figure out a way to invent a pencil that didn't need very much graphite. Because in 1793, Britain and France go to war. British Navy blockades France. They can't get British graphite or other good graphite. And so the government is running out of pencils and running out of material. Oh, funny. Yeah. Because at this time, graphite is, you know, gold, oil. It's something. It's a commodity. It's a commodity. And so according to Henry Petrosky, the French minister of war asked Conte to find another way to generate good pencils. And within a few days, he figured out that you could mix graphite with clay, and then shape that into a shaft, bake it, and put it between pieces of wood to make a pencil. And from there, this is the person who figured out that graphite clay mix and eventually the number two pencil.

That's amazing. Yeah. Are modern pencils in two halves? Yeah, it's a subtly glued together two pieces of wood around a piece of graphite and clay. And the paint kind of hides it. Yeah, I just assumed it was like drilled and inserted yeah i thought they were sticking it in there but but no it's like it's too i don't know what to believe anymore right yeah apparently since uh like the the mid to late 1800s they've worked

out this system of two machined pieces of wood and just sandwiched the graphite with it. Yeah, and so there's got to be a specific kind of glue. Yeah, glue. That really bonds. You don't even know it's glued. So there's a crazy bonding glue. Yeah, it's really tightly engineered. Somebody invented pencil glue

and they're just kicking back and i don't know who actually yeah that's a cool cat the cat that walked by the computer yeah uh had uh last month had a a year of crystals in his urine that was causing him great distress. Sure. Yeah. So we, they gave this pill that loosened his urethra to make it less painful for him to go to the bathroom. Somebody had to invent that. And someone out there is just kicking back, spending all that loose cat pee hole money he's like and i bought a statue of my achievement and everybody's like that's a gross statue i don't want to no i'm gonna avert my eyes on the way in up the big driveway exactly no exactly they're like did he did he like wake up with i've got it what why were you thinking about that right

yeah there's some pencil glue genius i don't actually know who did that they did great amazing but and then so Conte comes up with this and suddenly pencils are easier to make the raw materials are cheaper. Pencils are like democratized, you know, everybody can get one cheaply. And then from there, you know, various pencil manufacturers try to keep up with this and try to do endlessly better versions of it. And one of the first to do it was John Thoreau, who was a pencil maker in Massachusetts and had a pencil making facility. Oh, okay.

And then his son, Henry David, came and worked in the family business for many years and spent a lot of time. He also spent time teaching and stuff like that. But apparently in 1841, John Thoreau Jr. dies. And so Henry David's brother, John's son, Henry David, in grief, is like, I'm closing this school. I'm just going to come work in the family business for a while. And does a lot to like innovate their systems and especially start selling their pencils on a graded system of one through four. And according to Henry Petrosky, he did such a good job that, quote, there is little doubt that before Henry David Thoreau was the literary celebrity he has come to be, the pencils he and his father made came to be without peer in this country, end quote. And so Thoreau pencils were like the top pencil in the US in the 1840s. And since they used a one

through four scale, we had that scale. And number two was the popular one, the middle one. Wow. That's impressive. Yeah. And he like did that, stopped working there in 1845 and went straight to the woods and built his cabin at Walden Pond and wrote Walden. Like it was it was the next thing he did after Pencils was Walden. Or his time there and then the book.

But yeah. In his cabin, he just saw us being made of giant pencils. I'm going to have to save these pencils for when the giants come. I'll disguise them as a cabin. Yeah.'s the cabin going i need a lot of clay clay and graphite yeah okay i'll pretend i'm writing a book that will excuse my time his whole thing was he was sure giants were coming pencil leading giants yeah amazing but yeah yeah he henry david thoreau is one of the main pencil people in the history of them, especially in the US, and specifically getting the kind of pencil that we all use. I am not a visual artist.

I don't think I've ever owned a pencil that wasn't a number two pencil. I think that's just what I had. Yeah. Well, sometimes you get a three. You're like, God, it's too hard what what is wrong with this thing it must feel really weird yeah i wish i was dead what is wrong at some point the the crayon people showed up like visigoths at the gate it was like crayon crayons showed up like the advent of psychedelia like what what is

happening the pencil people dealt with the crayon people the same way lawrence welk looked at the strawberry alarm clock like what are you the crayons coming incense and peppermints. They make the pencil guy say, sock it to me, against their will. Sock it to me. folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks to dana gould for diving so deep on something that might seem pointless to some people anyway I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode.

This week's bonus topic is strange pencils used by famous people of the 20th century. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than four dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring number two pencils with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, a number two pencils quote unquote lead is actually carbon and clay mixed together. And takeaway number two, the modern number two pencil came from Napoleonic France and Henry David Thoreau. Plus tons of numbers and stats stuff in this one about everything from Scantron sheets to the potential lifespan of your number two pencil. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest. He's great.

Dana Gould, incredible television writer, incredible stand-up comedian. Beyond links to that, we will have a link to his podcast, The Dana Gould Hour. It is full of comedy and interviews and new fun all the time. Also, I want to point you to an amazing internet show called Hanging with Dr. Z. Hanging with Dr. Z is probably my favorite YouTube show right now of any of them. It's just that fun and funny and the guests are incredible and there's nothing like it. Please check that out. The show links are your friend. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. The key source of this episode is a book called The Pencil, A History of Design and Circumstance.

That is a book by Henry Petrosky. Dr. Petrosky is a professor of both engineering and history at Duke University. Go Blue Devils. Also, that incredible book was written in 1990, so obviously I went way beyond that. There's another great book we leaned on called Paper by Mark Kurlansky, and then a bunch of great pieces from Mental Floss, The Atlantic, NPR, The Washington Post, and more. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza

for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that?

Talk to you then.