the world of mechanical pencils ...
Now, there's a subject. When I was a kid there were always 2mm drop-lead clutch pencils around (I think they're known as lead holders in the US), because my father was a draughtsman. They were either Eagle Turquoise or Staedtler Mars brands, and closely modelled on wooden pencils but with a knurled metal section at the bottom for easy twirling to maintain a constant line width. Great: I still use them. As well as those there were the new fangled thin lead mechanical pencils, despised by old school types like my dad but compulsory for the new ISO and DIN standards. There was only one model used professionally, the Pentel 20x, and it was customary to have the set of four. Again, they're much the same in the hand as a wooden pencil: fairly light and slim and very basic. Pretty much anything designed before the mid 70s would have been drawn initially with a wooden or clutch pencil, and anything from then to the arrival of CAD and plotter with a Pentel. And inked with a Rotring Isograph, but that's another story!
Cut to today, and I can hardly believe some of the over-engineered contraptions marketed as draughting pencils: automatic lead rotation, shake to advance, barrels hewn out of solid unobtainium and so on. All these features supposedly essential for the professional. As far as I can see, from the standpoint of someone who has spent a lot of time at a drawing board, this is pure stationery fetishism ... it's actually rather fascinating and would make a novel subject for a thesis, if there's an academic discipline which concerns itself with this sort of thing. I've become deeply cynical about high end writing products, whether it's fountain pens made from "precious resin" or ink which costs £1 for 2ml - but fancy mechanical pencils really do take the biscuit. My philosophy now is to save money on tools and spend it on paper.
