A Japanese reporter interviewed me recently for a story on stationery products. He told me that the Japanese love new and innovative writing implements -- things that many Americans consider commodities. He was talking about mechanical pencils, ballpoint pens, highlighters, and the like. Since I had written a history of the pencil, he wanted my take on some of the latest in Japanese writing products.
In anticipation of our appointment, he mailed me a few things that are hot items in Japan: a new kind of mechanical pencil, a popular ballpoint pen, and a pencil case package containing two other ballpoint pens and two highlighters. I agreed to try them in advance of the interview, so that I could respond to his questions about them.
The Uni-ball Kuru Toga (Japanese for “twist and turn”) pencil came in a blister package with a cardboard insert that was printed in Japanese. However, I could tell from the pictures touting the pencil’s innovative feature what distinguished it. The cartoons made it clear that, instead of the lead wearing down to a single inclined plane, it rotated automatically as it was used, and so it wore down in a conical form, thereby maintaining a sharper point. This was something I immediately appreciated. When I was learning mechanical drawing, I was taught to rotate my pencil as I dragged it along a T-square or triangle edge, so that the width of the line would remain nearly uniform. Rotating my wooden pencils as I write with them is a habit I have to this day.
I appreciated the ingenuity of the pencil with the automatically rotating lead, but I told my interviewer that it was a feature that might be more a marketing than a selling point in the US. After all, the thickness of the lead was 0.5mm, and in the course of writing, it hardly mattered how such a thin lead wore down. Furthermore, I told him, in order to achieve the feature of self-rotating lead, the pencil body had to have the thickness of a fountain pen. I was used to my pencils, whether mechanical or not, having a more slender look and feel.
I believe I may have disappointed him with my answer, but I went on to explain that all design involves compromise, and to fit the rotation mechanism into the implement’s barrel, it had to be thicker than an ordinary pencil.
Jack, I really agree with you on this one. Much as we hear that cursive writing is unnecessary and so rarely used today that many younger people cannot even read it--a concept I find astounding--I still think that it bears learning. At the very least, there are still lots of non-digital "texts" lying around written in cursive. Historians, for example, can't do without it. But there are also family documents and other materials written in cursive.
I was thinking along the same lines as Ann when I was reading this article. There is a big cultural component to the Japanese preferences. Meanwhile, on this side of the Pacific, we're reading articles about whether or not to even teach cursive writing in grade schools.
I'd bet that the difference here is definitely cultural. In Japan, the traditional writing instrument was a beautiful fine-pointed brush, combined with a block of solid ink containing a shallow well on top for adding a little water to mix the ink to the right liquid consistency. This toolkit is the same one used to create their exquisite brush paintings. I learned to use it in school back when we were studying Japan. It's also very Japanese to combine the new and the old.
Glad to hear you're still analog when it comes to pens, Chuck. I've always liked pencils, not because you can erase, but simple for the feel in the hand and the look on paper.
Yet I do find myself using pencils less due to writing on Word documents (or in comments such as this).
Maybe Japan is advancing the hand writing tool, but here in the U.S., I've seen that expensive pens do not surpass the efficiency of cheap pens any longer. They sued to. Over the past ten years, the cartridges in quality pens seem no better than they are in cheap pens. They still dry out and leak. Maybe it's because I live in the desert.
True, the paperless revolution has changed the use of pens and pencils. I do use pens, however, all day, every day. I also get ink on my fingers, all day, every day. I've yet to meet the pen that doesn't cause that problem. I'm wondering if Japanese pen makers have a solution for that.
We always got punished by low grades if we used pencils for drafting, we were instead encouraged to use Indian ink based drafting pens. We had these little erasers that were a fibreglass bundle to scrape the ink off the drafting film. By was I glad when computer based CAD came along. For the last 10 years the only thing I used my pen for was signing a credity card receipt, I can't even do my signature properly anymore :-) thank GOD they allow use of a PIN now. :-). On the subject of erasable ink, the Germans have at least since the early 1970's had a chemical eraser that makes fountain pen ink disappear like magic. It was advised then to only sign cheques with a ballpoint pen to avoid cheque fraud.
I use mechanical drawing pencils a lot, ever since university. When I get a chance to visit a big stationers (rare as I'm presently a beach bum), I'll always browse through their pencil department to see if I can find a better one. But the ones I like were chosen nearly 3 decades ago.
My favourite is a Staedler 0.7 mm with a cushioned lead.
Next is the ubiquitous Pentel in 0.7 or 0.5 Not quite as good as the Staedler (fixed lead) but more easily available & reliable.
A good pencil is essential in the eary stages of a design. I don't think any CAD tool is as versatile in the important thinking stages.
I also use them for sketching and drawing. I pretend to be an artist at times. It's a good way to get girls to take their clothes off.
My brother's archictectural practice achieved some fame as an early adopter of fancy CAD systems but he still impresses clients and his younger architects by sketching out ideas on the spot.
We underestimate the importance of tools which enhance creative thinking. These have to be VERY quick, simple and expressive to keep up with human thought.
It will come but it will be some time before an iPad application (with stylus) allows the facility and sheer volume of info that can be expressed on the traditional back-of-an-envelope.
Good point, Walter. Writing implements are simply not used as often as before. I bought a gross of pencils 10 years ago. I used the first half in the first two or three years. The balance will last for another 10 or 12 years, maybe more. Most of my writing has shifted to the computer.
To be honest, who cares? I haven't replaced the lead in my mechanical pencil in years even though I have a drawer full of leads of all types and colours. I sharpen my wood pencil about once in six months. A dispoable ballpoint lasts a year. The paperless revolution is in the mopping up phase.
I've noticed that historically the biggest, most advanced of any technology is generally the last one before the whole concept goes obsolete. Think of the Great Eastern, the B-36 and Cheop's Pyramid.
I was taught to rotate my pencil about the same time that I was first taught to write, which was probably in first grade, although the turning lessons may have come in second grade. I have used a lot of pencils and pens since then. I was in seventh grade when ball-point pens became the fad, and there certainly was, and still is, a huge spread in quality. Still today I use both wood and mechanical pencils, and it is still true that the quality spread in mechanical penciles is huge.
Today pencils and pens are mostly commodity items that don't occupy much of engineering's attention. Rather than attempt to find some small nich, most of our engineering is involved with more important things, such as increasing efficiency and reducing the use of resources. Our engineering tends to be more toward creating what never was, rather than polishing some comodity item that many others have already improved on many times.
Of course, there is also the marketing wonk driven push for product differentiation that some find so very important. That does seem to be a different way to waste talent and resources.
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