NYTimes, I don't care how much you pay photographer Christopher Payne and the rest of your photography staff (and contractors). No way is it enough. This is incredible work.
A quick internet search tells me Payne -- who shot the article -- specializes in large-format photography focusing on industry, and the samples on his website are breathtaking: https://www.chrispaynephoto.com/ Seems like the kind of thing that would be right up HN's alley.
From the relevant gallery on Payne's site: "Between 2016 and 2018, I made several dozen trips to the factory, photographing every aspect of production. A selection of these photographs was published in The New York Times Magazine in January 2018, with an accompanying essay by Sam Anderson."
I just saw that he is the one who photographed "New York's Forgotten Substations: The Power Behind The Subway" a great book on the old substations that powered the NYC subway system. Certainly an excellent photographer.
I rolled my eyes reading your comment and went to the site to validate that your gushing praise was over the top. Boy was I wrong! His work is incredible!
Too many photographers these days misuse/overuse the Bokeh effect and lose important visual information in their photos. They also use poor lightning and coloring, under the guise it is artistic when in fact it is a frustrating loss of the visual elements.
Musgrave Pencil Co [0], in Shelbyville, TN is one of the only other ones in the country I'm aware of.
The biggest challenge for a lot of these is that they essentially require full-time machinists to keep the old machinery running, as the manufacturers typically have gone out of business decades ago. Tremont Nail Co [1] is another one I'm aware of, because they manufacture nails with old processes (cutting instead of wire).
Which really tells the story of US manufacturing decline. When all supporting functions of an industry no longer exist, or have migrated to other countries, or have been surpassed by new technology, why should we romanticize and pine for an era that has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era and double down on the things we are best at?
>Which really tells the story of US manufacturing decline. When all supporting functions of an industry no longer exist, or have migrated to other countries, or have been surpassed by new technology, why should we romanticize and pine for an era that has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era and double down on the things we are best at?
That is true, and most people do not romanticize working in a factory as their day job. However it is a good idea I think to keep some small amount of it onshore so the knowledge is not totally lost, in case whatever country who is doing the manufacturing decides to use that as leverage over your country.
> why should we romanticize and pine for an era that has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era and double down on the things we are best at?
Because if something bad happens, be it a war, trade war with tarrifs or a pandemic, or just a stuck ship somewhere blocking transport, you're left without everything that you were once able to make, but can't make anymore.
but going back to processes that are essentially "artisan" at this point, instead of re-shoring efficient automated manufacturing is the problem. Doubling down on making high volume pencils in an inefficient way is a fools errand when, if the stated goal is to manufacture all pencils domestically used through domestic firms is going to require an entire domestic supply chain on top of entirely new manufacturing processes and machinery.
Trying to scale old systems is not going to solve the issue of not being able to make the things we want to own, if that is even a good or feasible goal in the first place.
I think that's a bit of a straw man, onshoring doesn't demand that it re-implements 1910-style production.
Maybe a new-tech pencil factory would only require 10 staff to run it 24/7. That's fine. Onshoring doesn't equate to full employment, but it does result in skills, knowledge and revenue remaining within a local OODA loop instead of being exported along with the actual production.
personal opinion, I like general's and regularly use some (especially the cedar pointe #1, and they also have some solid art pencils), but japanese pencils like uni mitsubishi and tombow are simply the best in the world
Given someone always posts these it's too bad every article can't just be set up with that kind of link. If there's a legal reason it can't be done I'd not be surprised though.
The truth is that a lot of current American manufacturing sees little investment / engineering towards the automation that could save it and is in a holding pattern where it will eventually be shut down or moved to a country with cheaper labor costs.
It’s a completely financial thought process. Nobody is going to invest capital to make pencils 7% cheaper when I can dump money in monkey NFTs and yield a big short term gain. China has incentives to make pursuing those opportunities attractive.
The glory days of manufacturing that people think of are their grandparents union jobs in the 1960s. The problem is the leadership people like Musk and Bezos are thinking more 1860 than 1960 :)
Last time I visited a Chinese factory (which was before covid) it was heavily automated without much staff. They also did have a few foreign laborers who didn't speak the local language, ironically.
I visited a US factory more recently,o and it was all about A.I., automation, and engineers (who maintained and operated the robots). Availability of cheap unskilled labor was not a relevant factor in the business.
Aside from what happened in 2008, American manufacturing has effectively only ever grown by leaps and bounds, even while manufacturing jobs have cratered. It is quite apparent that American manufacturing has fully embraced automation where it is sensible to do so.
Seems like that already happened for industries susceptible for that. You don’t need ai to automate a factory. You could do that by 1950. Labor costs have been cheap elsewhere for a while too. Plenty of manufacturing already left for these reasons. What remains stateside probably has some sticking factor that is highly context specific and impossible to generalize.
There were predecessors to pencils going back hundreds of years before that, with very similar capabilities. They used soft metals that streak when dragged across a surface, particularly silver and lead (Pb) (also the etymology of "pencil lead"); and sharpened these into narrow points. The modern pencil sort of iterated on those ideas. Soft graphite powder, in a wax binder, leaves a streak superior to metals; and encasing it in wood was the solution to the graphite composite's brittleness.
My wife does silverpoint. A couple of bucks worth of fine silver wire in an old mechanical pencil, and you're set for years of drawing. Pretty much the cheapest way to do art (and it looks good, too)
Henry Petroski wrote a great book about the history of the pencil. There used to be a mine in Southern England which contained pure graphite, that was found in the 16th century. That graphite could just be cut into sticks and made into writing implements. The modern pencil consisting of powdered graphite with a binder is a response to that mine being exhausted. So it's a substitute for a product that wasn't possible before that pure deposit was found.
At risk of pedantry and not to diminish the overall point. I think the graphite deposit was in Borrowdale which is in NW England. There’s actually a pencil museum in Keswick, a nearby town.
A pencil is essentially a core of something that easily rubs off onto other things surrounded in a protective cladding of something that keeps it from rubbing off onto your hands; stuff like this has existed for centuries.
There is essentially only one place in the world where graphite suitable for pencils naturally exists, and this wasn't discovered until the 1500s. Making it artificially from powdered graphite was first done in 1662, and the first process that approximates modern pencil construction was done in 1795, which is probably what you're calling the invention of the pencil.
NYTimes, I don't care how much you pay photographer Christopher Payne and the rest of your photography staff (and contractors). No way is it enough. This is incredible work.
A quick internet search tells me Payne -- who shot the article -- specializes in large-format photography focusing on industry, and the samples on his website are breathtaking: https://www.chrispaynephoto.com/ Seems like the kind of thing that would be right up HN's alley.
From the relevant gallery on Payne's site: "Between 2016 and 2018, I made several dozen trips to the factory, photographing every aspect of production. A selection of these photographs was published in The New York Times Magazine in January 2018, with an accompanying essay by Sam Anderson."
Several dozen!
The gallery: https://www.chrispaynephoto.com/general-pencil-1
I just saw that he is the one who photographed "New York's Forgotten Substations: The Power Behind The Subway" a great book on the old substations that powered the NYC subway system. Certainly an excellent photographer.
He had a coffee table book of photos come out not too long ago called "Made in America" that is really nice.
Thank you for sharing this! Pretty much every single gallery on his website is awe-inspiring, he's an incredible artist.
Amazing! Thank you for pointing out that he has such a beautiful website with his work on it
I rolled my eyes reading your comment and went to the site to validate that your gushing praise was over the top. Boy was I wrong! His work is incredible!
Too many photographers these days misuse/overuse the Bokeh effect and lose important visual information in their photos. They also use poor lightning and coloring, under the guise it is artistic when in fact it is a frustrating loss of the visual elements.
Kudos to Chris Payne and his amazing work.
Musgrave Pencil Co [0], in Shelbyville, TN is one of the only other ones in the country I'm aware of.
The biggest challenge for a lot of these is that they essentially require full-time machinists to keep the old machinery running, as the manufacturers typically have gone out of business decades ago. Tremont Nail Co [1] is another one I'm aware of, because they manufacture nails with old processes (cutting instead of wire).
Which really tells the story of US manufacturing decline. When all supporting functions of an industry no longer exist, or have migrated to other countries, or have been surpassed by new technology, why should we romanticize and pine for an era that has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era and double down on the things we are best at?
[0] - https://musgravepencil.com [1] - https://tremontnail.com
>Which really tells the story of US manufacturing decline. When all supporting functions of an industry no longer exist, or have migrated to other countries, or have been surpassed by new technology, why should we romanticize and pine for an era that has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era and double down on the things we are best at?
That is true, and most people do not romanticize working in a factory as their day job. However it is a good idea I think to keep some small amount of it onshore so the knowledge is not totally lost, in case whatever country who is doing the manufacturing decides to use that as leverage over your country.
[0]: ...they're having a "beat the tariff sale". 5% off everything.
> why should we romanticize and pine for an era that has been passed by? Why shouldn't we have a vision for a new era and double down on the things we are best at?
Because if something bad happens, be it a war, trade war with tarrifs or a pandemic, or just a stuck ship somewhere blocking transport, you're left without everything that you were once able to make, but can't make anymore.
but going back to processes that are essentially "artisan" at this point, instead of re-shoring efficient automated manufacturing is the problem. Doubling down on making high volume pencils in an inefficient way is a fools errand when, if the stated goal is to manufacture all pencils domestically used through domestic firms is going to require an entire domestic supply chain on top of entirely new manufacturing processes and machinery.
Trying to scale old systems is not going to solve the issue of not being able to make the things we want to own, if that is even a good or feasible goal in the first place.
I think that's a bit of a straw man, onshoring doesn't demand that it re-implements 1910-style production.
Maybe a new-tech pencil factory would only require 10 staff to run it 24/7. That's fine. Onshoring doesn't equate to full employment, but it does result in skills, knowledge and revenue remaining within a local OODA loop instead of being exported along with the actual production.
The company featured - https://generalpencil.com/
Interesting, I (being pencil ignorant) wonder how they compare to the Japanese ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243716
personal opinion, I like general's and regularly use some (especially the cedar pointe #1, and they also have some solid art pencils), but japanese pencils like uni mitsubishi and tombow are simply the best in the world
https://archive.ph/ucyK2
Thank you for your service.
Given someone always posts these it's too bad every article can't just be set up with that kind of link. If there's a legal reason it can't be done I'd not be surprised though.
there's browser extensions that'll do it as well
The truth is that a lot of current American manufacturing sees little investment / engineering towards the automation that could save it and is in a holding pattern where it will eventually be shut down or moved to a country with cheaper labor costs.
Automation has been buoying it. We are producing as much as we have in the past but at 10% of the workforce.
It’s a completely financial thought process. Nobody is going to invest capital to make pencils 7% cheaper when I can dump money in monkey NFTs and yield a big short term gain. China has incentives to make pursuing those opportunities attractive.
The glory days of manufacturing that people think of are their grandparents union jobs in the 1960s. The problem is the leadership people like Musk and Bezos are thinking more 1860 than 1960 :)
Last time I visited a Chinese factory (which was before covid) it was heavily automated without much staff. They also did have a few foreign laborers who didn't speak the local language, ironically.
I visited a US factory more recently,o and it was all about A.I., automation, and engineers (who maintained and operated the robots). Availability of cheap unskilled labor was not a relevant factor in the business.
This is known as Lights-Out Manufacturing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing)
Aside from what happened in 2008, American manufacturing has effectively only ever grown by leaps and bounds, even while manufacturing jobs have cratered. It is quite apparent that American manufacturing has fully embraced automation where it is sensible to do so.
Seems like that already happened for industries susceptible for that. You don’t need ai to automate a factory. You could do that by 1950. Labor costs have been cheap elsewhere for a while too. Plenty of manufacturing already left for these reasons. What remains stateside probably has some sticking factor that is highly context specific and impossible to generalize.
I was astonished to discover (via HN) that the pencil was invented (patented) in 1795, I has always assumed that it was from antiquity
There were predecessors to pencils going back hundreds of years before that, with very similar capabilities. They used soft metals that streak when dragged across a surface, particularly silver and lead (Pb) (also the etymology of "pencil lead"); and sharpened these into narrow points. The modern pencil sort of iterated on those ideas. Soft graphite powder, in a wax binder, leaves a streak superior to metals; and encasing it in wood was the solution to the graphite composite's brittleness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverpoint
Here's a zoomable example by da Vinci (don't you agree they look awfully similar to pencil lines?)
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1860-0616-...
My wife does silverpoint. A couple of bucks worth of fine silver wire in an old mechanical pencil, and you're set for years of drawing. Pretty much the cheapest way to do art (and it looks good, too)
Seems like taking charcoal and binding it with cleaner wood to not soil your hands would be one of the first inventions after using charcoal to draw
Henry Petroski wrote a great book about the history of the pencil. There used to be a mine in Southern England which contained pure graphite, that was found in the 16th century. That graphite could just be cut into sticks and made into writing implements. The modern pencil consisting of powdered graphite with a binder is a response to that mine being exhausted. So it's a substitute for a product that wasn't possible before that pure deposit was found.
At risk of pedantry and not to diminish the overall point. I think the graphite deposit was in Borrowdale which is in NW England. There’s actually a pencil museum in Keswick, a nearby town.
A pencil is essentially a core of something that easily rubs off onto other things surrounded in a protective cladding of something that keeps it from rubbing off onto your hands; stuff like this has existed for centuries.
There is essentially only one place in the world where graphite suitable for pencils naturally exists, and this wasn't discovered until the 1500s. Making it artificially from powdered graphite was first done in 1662, and the first process that approximates modern pencil construction was done in 1795, which is probably what you're calling the invention of the pencil.
The ancients had reed/bamboo pens, which looked similar to modern pencils, though they were largely supplanted by quill pens by medieval times.
They had charcoal too. There are charcoal graffiti in Pompeii.
The answer is 100% charcoal.
Ancient pencils were made of charcoal, unless you have a very obtuse definition of what a pencil is.
If you've never made a pencil at home out of charcoal, can you even say you are a free (wo)?man\?
Might be interesting to compare with the Mitsubishi Pencil & Tombow factories in Japan. :)
No one knows how to make a pencil.
for something purely American, and just as eduring there is
https://www.edenkazoo.com/museum.php
not just a museum, also a working factory
which by pure accident I encountered, while traveling to see the GD,