This Article From Issue
March-April 2000
Volume 88, Number 2
Page 114
DOI: 10.1511/2000.19.114
This year marks the tenth anniversary of this column and also of the publication of my book The Pencil. For the 55 columns that have appeared to date, there are probably 55 reasons why their subjects were chosen when they were. But The Pencil, being a single book, has a single story of its origins. That is not to say that it is a simple story. It is, however, a story that addresses questions that many readers have asked me over the past 10 years, and so I will try to explain here how the book came to be. It is a story of impressions, images, memories, curiosity, serendipity and choice. It is also a story of failure, research and engineering science, and one for which some background is necessary for the telling.
Photographs courtesy of Henry Petroski
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