Most people using the Pencils.com site already know that Henry David Thoreau was a pencil manufacturer in addition to being a famous author and pencil user.

The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

There are other interesting post's about Thoreau's pencil makeing efforts including:

This article titled The Machine in the Wetland details Thoreau and his father's efforts to construct a specialiazed 7 foot high chamber to assist in the grinding and sorting of the finest particles of graphiteⁱ to make the cores.

Thoreau was not the only Concord, Massachusetts area pencil manufacturer in the early 19th century and this article titled Concord's Sharp Pencil Makers Write Themselves into History published in Concord Magazine covers some of the others including William Monroe and Ebenezer Wood.

Henry Petroski's seminal book The Pencil: A History of Design & Circumstance devotes a whole chapter to Thoreau and pencil making.

Thoreau was a chronic journaler and today's daily diary entry probably written with orignially with a wooden pencil can be found here.