Mechanical Pencil Made of Reinforcing Steel With a 5.6-mm Lead

It can’t be heavy enough for the engineers: this construction site writing implement is for them. The brainchild of German architect Axel P. Huhold has become the joy of all engineers, architects, construction and steel workers who like to have a firm grip on their pencils. The mechanical pencil (for 5.6 mm graphite refills) is made from reinforcement rod. It is not light but sits well in the hand and is predestined to make sketches. And it comes in a receptacle made of what else: concrete.

”A pencil – if you should produce it from scratch! Imagine humanity is gone, and you have to make a pencil yourself – it’s magic!“ (Arno Schmidt)

The history of the modern pencil begins with the discovery of the first English graphite mines in the 17th century. However, with success came a problem: The pencil leads were cut from massive material, and the resulting pieces were a luxury. That changed when the Frenchman Nicolas Jacques Conté and the Austrian Josef Hardtmuth developed a ceramic process to produce pencil leads. At the end of the 18th century, they began to mix graphite dust with clay and fired the leads in an oven, with the amount of clay and length of time in the oven determining the hardness of the lead. The advantages of this mixture made history: With the high level of stability, it became possible to write with a vertical tip, with satisfying smear resistance, that was relatively impervious to fading. And a welcome opportunity for the writer emerged: upon sober reconsideration, one could erase what one had written.