General PencilsGeneral Pencil Company's artist products come to you from our factory in Jersey City, New Jersey. We believe in quality, tradition, value, and the fun of creating.

On April 1, 2008 Staedtler posted a brief press release on the 170 year history of made in Germany. Among other things the press release discusses the origin of the Mars brand's blue color and helmet logo.

With the recent 150th anniversary of the patent of the eraser tipped pencil, I have seen several new references around the web about pencils and a few indicating that 75% of pencils sold in the United States are painted yellow. This seems to be acommon myth about pencils, which I've analyzed in this post on my Timberlines blog here.

Bob Truby's Brand Name Pencil website has an extensive set of images of pencils in his collection from over 130 different brands around the world. It's well organized by company name with images of a varying number of different pencils from each company. It appears that the current count is up around 1800 different pencil images thus far.

When Henry Petroski looks at a pencil, he sees far more than a simple writing tool. Dr. Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University, views the pencil as a symbol of engineering. In his 1992 book, The Pencil: A History of Design & Circumstance, Dr. Petroski uses the pencil as a representation of the engineer and the pencil-making process as an ideal for the engineering method.