Review: The Pencil

This isn’t a review of the writing/drawing instrument, but rather The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski. I was really looking forward to reading this book, as I enjoyed Petroski’s other book The Evolution of Useful Things and it was at the top of Steven Levy’s 10 Great Tech Books list. But to be honest, I found this book downright boring when it wasn’t repetitive and overlong. I found myself skimming whole chapters and, truthfully, most of the middle of the book. It’s that slow.

It took me a long time to get through this book, even while skimming 3/4 of it. I was trying to find meaning and relevance in the story of the humble pencil aside from just, well, the pencil is complicated. At a minimum, I wanted the tale to be a little more exciting, the story one I cared about. Instead, it dragged. Here’s the tidbits I got out of the book:

The very commonness of the pencil, the characteristic that renders it all but invisible and seemingly valueless, is really the first feature of successful engineering. Good engineering blends into the environment, becomes a part of society and culture so naturally that a special effort is required to notice it.

The unity of an artifact of engineering is judged by its performance not only aesthetically and intellectually, but also functionally and economically.

Innovation springs from perceived failure.

While pencils may be useful in formulating abstract theories of motion and gravitation, abstract theories do not make pencils.

The sophisticated use of materials is at the heart of all modern technology, whether it involves pencil or automobile or computer manufacturing.

There tend to be three broad areas into which technological developments fall: new concepts, new magnitudes, new materials.

On closer inspection, even what can appear to be the commonest, smallest, and simplest of objects can reveal itself to be on its own terms as complex and as grand as a space shuttle or a great suspension bridge. So to scrutinize the trivial can be to discover the monumental. Almost any object can serve to unveil the mysteries of engineering and its relation to art, business, and all other aspects of our culture.

It is the ideal of design to make and furnish the best artifact for the money by using the best available resources, where resources include style, time, and energy, as well as hard cash and materials. Because there are always constraints of economy and possibility, any product of engineering can always be criticized because it will never be totally efficient or flawlessly made or perfectly strong or absolutely safe, if indeed it can be made at all safe, at all strong, or at all, period, and still perform adequately the function that is its raison d’être.

And there you have the book’s essence in a nutshell, I think, minus, well, the whole history of the pencil part. If it seems like that history would really, really fascinate you, I recommend this book. Otherwise, I just saved you some time.

This was written by Dan Saffer. Posted on Wednesday, October 8, 2008, at 6:31 pm. Filed under Book Reviews. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.