Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Believe Me, It Was High-Tech in Its Time

One of my guilty pleasures is Smithsonian.com’s “Today in History” feature; and I was pleased to see, at the end of last month, an acknowledgement of the important advance in technology pioneered by Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia. On March 30, 1858, Lipman was issued a patent for his breakthrough concept: attaching a piece of rubber inside one end of a pencil to serve as an eraser.

(Regrettably, 17 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court would revoke the patent, ruling that “a pencil with an eraser is just a pencil with an eraser and not a new invention.” Churlish of them, in my opinion.)

According to the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. is the single largest market for wood-encased pencils today … in part, because it is the instrument-of-choice when it comes to solving Sudoku and crossword puzzles. It’s also immensely useful in all of the communications professions … but especially public relations and journalism. Unlike a pen, a pencil never leaks, surprises you by running out of ink or freezes in cold weather. Despite its many virtues, however, I know people who haven’t written anything with pencil — let alone erased it — for years now.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, I have to say that I have nothing but pity for my colleagues who were born into a high-tech universe in which the delete button is sufficient to their needs.

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