John Steinbeck was an American writer who grew up in rural California amid a productive agricultural region and society. He spent his summers working on ranches and farms and was exposed to working conditions and the lives of migrant farm workers which greatly influenced his writing.

He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939) and the short novel "Of Mice and Men" (1937). In all he wrote twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Click here for more on Steinbeck's life and writings.

A very interesting bit of trivia about his life is that he loved to write with pencils and was a prolific consumer of pencils every day and was a fan of the famous Blackwing pencil among others. You might call him the Ultimate Pencil Pusher.

In her post Perfect Pencil, John Steinbeck, Blackwing Pencils and the Mongol 480 historian Lito Apostolakou writes:

"Steinbeck's favourite writing instrument was indeed the pencil. It is said that John Steinbeck would start the day with 24 newly-sharpened pencils which he would need to sharpen again before the day was through with a rare for his time electric pencil sharpener. The story goes that he used some 300 pencils to complete East of Eden (1952). For the Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Cannery Row (1945) he is said to have used 60 cedar pencils every day."

Read more of Lito's post on Steibeck's use of pencils here.

Return to Famous Pencil User's Page here.

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.

This is something I missed about a month ago. I had several people asking me about March 30th, 2008 being the 150th anniversary of the invention of the pencil. I was telling them the wood cased pencil was much older and that they must be mistaken. It appears they were refering to the 150th anniversary of the Hymen Lipman patent which actually was for a specific design to encase an eraser in the opposite end of the pencil from the writing end. Either end could be sharpened.

Hyman Lipman Patent Drawing

This post from Today in Technology History covers more details on the history. As it turns out there were countering claims from another inventor who developed the use of a ferrule to attach an eraser (as per today's common method) and with Faber who claimed these were not patentable innovations since pencil and erasers previously existed and the combination did not change the basic function of these two items. The case eventually went to the US Supreme Court.

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.

The official Site of the American Pencil Collectors Society.

Here's an excerpt from the History of the Society.

Here is a link to an article on the history of the Eagle Pencil Company written by Sterling Picard and hosted on the website The Lion and Pen. The Lion and Pen is primarily a Pen fan site, but given Eagle's history producing some fine pens I guess this site decided to include this piece in it's list of hosted articles.

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.

Doug Martin's Pencil Pages provides a very thorough and the most informative article I've ever read regarding the Copying Pencil.

The article entitled, "The Copying Pencil: Composition, History, and Conservation Implications" which was written by Liz Dube, Conservator of the University of Notre Dame Libraries. The article was orignally published in "The Book and Paper Group Annual", a publication of The American Institute for Conservation, volume 17 (1998), pp. 45-52.