4 ms·

I couldn't help but think of the wonderful essay "I, Pencil" [1], and how no one person knows how to make a pencil. [1]: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/

I couldn't help but think of the wonderful essay "I, Pencil" [1], and how no one person knows how to make a pencil. [1]: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

dekhn 9y ago
that's a nicely written story but none of it is really true. You can make a straightforward pencil manually with a little effort. It's all documented, because this stuff was figured out and documented hundreds of years ago. Having a degree in chemistry or physics helps, but it's not necessary.
- Noumenon72 9y ago
  Is this true? When I Googled "how to make a pencil" the video started "Wrap a piece of paper around the lead..."
  - dekhn 9y ago
    yes. just read the patents.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  >You can make a straightforward pencil manually with a little effort. Step 1: Find a graphite mine. Making anything without the benefit of the market is staggeringly difficult. Knitting a sweater is easy. Raising your own sheep, shearing your own wool, washing, picking, carding, roving and spinning your own yarn is immensely difficult.
  - bluntfang 9y ago
    step 1: create the universe
- jasode 9y ago
  >You can make a straightforward pencil manually You're inadvertently moving the goal posts. A "straightforward pencil" isn't what that 1958 essay is about. It's talking about the modern manufactured pencils[1] commonly used in schools. It's very unlikely that a single person on Earth knows how to make such pencils from raw materials. The person who knows where to find graphite and how to mine for it will not be the same person who knows how to formulate the paint. Neither of them knows how to chop down raw trees and make small hexagon shaped tubes to hold the pencil lead. Then there's the steel or brass ring coupling the eraser to the the wood. There's also the chemistry and materials science to make the synthetic rubber for the eraser. No single person on the planet knows how to make that type of pencil. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=no+2+school+pencil&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=no+2+school+pencil&source=ln...
  - dekhn 9y ago
    I take a very different view (similar to the guy who made a toaster from materials mined from the earth): as a maker, with a PhD in biophysics, I can learn how to do all those things and, through an incredibly tedious process, reproduce what they've done. For pencils, that's pretty easy. Graphite mining, paint formulation, wood sourcing and processing, ferrule production and application, rubber polymer manufacture and application- those are all straightforward industrial things that a well-educated person can learn to do with a combination of the Internet and a good university library. A much harder thing woudl be to reproduce a modern quantum physics lab- I don't think any one person could master all the techniques required to do that from raw materials. Too much tech stack to walk u.
    - stinkytaco 9y ago
      I think that far exceeds "a little effort", however. And there's the problem of access. I might be able to mine graphite, but where am I going to get a graphite mine? I enjoy the How to Make Everything channel on Youtube for this reason. Here's what's probably their most popular video, the $1500 Sandwich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE
    - 9y ago
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  You missed the point of the story. Many people would have the technical talent to reverse-engineer a pencil; that's not the lesson.
  - Gibbon1 9y ago
    The real moral of the story is economists have inflated opinions of themselves and low opinions of everyone else.
    - jasode 9y ago
      >economists have inflated opinions of themselves The author, Leonard E Read, is not an economist nor did he get an economics degree. He's a college dropout.[1] He was a businessman but his extracurricular activities included writing. (E.g. the essay "I, Pencil"). We might call him a "social commentator". [1] https://fee.org/articles/leonard-read-the-founder-and-builder/ https://fee.org/articles/leonard-read-the-founder-and-builde...

dekhn 9y ago

that's a nicely written story but none of it is really true. You can make a straightforward pencil manually with a little effort. It's all documented, because this stuff was figured out and documented hundreds of years ago. Having a degree in chemistry or physics helps, but it's not necessary.

Noumenon72 9y ago
Is this true? When I Googled "how to make a pencil" the video started "Wrap a piece of paper around the lead..."
- dekhn 9y ago
  yes. just read the patents.
jdietrich 9y ago
>You can make a straightforward pencil manually with a little effort. Step 1: Find a graphite mine. Making anything without the benefit of the market is staggeringly difficult. Knitting a sweater is easy. Raising your own sheep, shearing your own wool, washing, picking, carding, roving and spinning your own yarn is immensely difficult.
- bluntfang 9y ago
  step 1: create the universe
jasode 9y ago
>You can make a straightforward pencil manually You're inadvertently moving the goal posts. A "straightforward pencil" isn't what that 1958 essay is about. It's talking about the modern manufactured pencils[1] commonly used in schools. It's very unlikely that a single person on Earth knows how to make such pencils from raw materials. The person who knows where to find graphite and how to mine for it will not be the same person who knows how to formulate the paint. Neither of them knows how to chop down raw trees and make small hexagon shaped tubes to hold the pencil lead. Then there's the steel or brass ring coupling the eraser to the the wood. There's also the chemistry and materials science to make the synthetic rubber for the eraser. No single person on the planet knows how to make that type of pencil. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=no+2+school+pencil&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=no+2+school+pencil&source=ln...
- dekhn 9y ago
  I take a very different view (similar to the guy who made a toaster from materials mined from the earth): as a maker, with a PhD in biophysics, I can learn how to do all those things and, through an incredibly tedious process, reproduce what they've done. For pencils, that's pretty easy. Graphite mining, paint formulation, wood sourcing and processing, ferrule production and application, rubber polymer manufacture and application- those are all straightforward industrial things that a well-educated person can learn to do with a combination of the Internet and a good university library. A much harder thing woudl be to reproduce a modern quantum physics lab- I don't think any one person could master all the techniques required to do that from raw materials. Too much tech stack to walk u.
  - stinkytaco 9y ago
    I think that far exceeds "a little effort", however. And there's the problem of access. I might be able to mine graphite, but where am I going to get a graphite mine? I enjoy the How to Make Everything channel on Youtube for this reason. Here's what's probably their most popular video, the $1500 Sandwich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE
  - 9y ago
lobster_johnson 9y ago
You missed the point of the story. Many people would have the technical talent to reverse-engineer a pencil; that's not the lesson.
- Gibbon1 9y ago
  The real moral of the story is economists have inflated opinions of themselves and low opinions of everyone else.
  - jasode 9y ago
    >economists have inflated opinions of themselves The author, Leonard E Read, is not an economist nor did he get an economics degree. He's a college dropout.[1] He was a businessman but his extracurricular activities included writing. (E.g. the essay "I, Pencil"). We might call him a "social commentator". [1] https://fee.org/articles/leonard-read-the-founder-and-builder/ https://fee.org/articles/leonard-read-the-founder-and-builde...