Makers of Many Things

re to hunt for goose quills. They carried these to the teacher, and with his penknife-which took its name from the work it did-h

, especially as the whole thing was useless as soon as the pen was worn out, but they were highly esteemed because they lasted longer than quills and did not have to be mended. After a while separ

nch thick, that is, three times as thick as the finished pen. The first machine cuts the sheet crosswise into strips from two to three inches wide, varying according to the size of the pen to be made. These strips are put into iron boxes an

steel soft and pliable, it must be annealed again, kept red hot for several hours, and then cooled. Thus far it has looked like a tiny fence paling, but at length it begins to resemble a pen, for it is now stamped with whatever letters or designs may be desired, usually the name of the maker and the name and number of the variety of pen, and it is pressed between a pair of dies to form it into a curve. The last annealing left the metal soft so that

he finishing touches. If you look closely at the outside of a steel pen just above the nib, you will see that across it run tiny lines. They hav

of the point and not reach beyond the little hole that was punched. Only one thing is lacking now to make the pen a useful member of societ

forming, tempering, grinding, and slitting, are just what they should be. These pens carry the maker's name, and a few poor ones getting into the market might spoil the sale of thousands

ered, put into boxes, labeled, packed, and sold for such low prices that the good folk of a century ago, who paid from twenty-five to fifty cents for a pen, would have opened their eyes in amazement. When the typewriter was invented, some people said, "That will be the death of the steel pen"; but a

e flexibility of the quill, but does not have to be "mended." Gold pens are made in much the same way as are steel pens; but just at the point a tiny shelf is squeezed. Upon this shelf a bit of the alloy of two exceedingly hard metals, iridium and osmium, is secured b

en itself is like any other gold pen, but the barrel is full of ink. A little tube carries the ink to the point, and the slight bending back of the pen as one writes lets it run out upon the paper. At the end of the slit, at the back of the pen, is a hole to let air into the barrel as the ink runs

ause the needle fills up the hole. When you press the point on paper to write, the needle falls back just enough to let out what ink is needed. The flow stops the instant the pen ceases to touch the paper. The special advantage of the stylographic is that the m

o sticks of lead were used for marking, and made a pale-gray line. When graphite was introduced, its mark was so black that people called it black lead, and the name has stuck. No one who has ever tried to use a pencil of real lead could fail to appreciate graphi

be manufactured with as much care as if it were made up of twenty. First of all, the graphite is ground and ground and ground, until, if you take a pinch of it between your thumb and finger, you can hardly feel that anything is there. It is now sifted through fine silk and mixed with water and finely powdered clay, and becomes a

pencil, and put into ovens and baked for hours in a heat twenty times as great as that of a hot summer day. They certainly ought to be well dried and ready for the wood. The red cedar of Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama is the best wood for pencils because it is soft and has a fine, straight grain. It is cut into slabs about as long as one pencil, as wide as

seph Dixon

AD GETS IN

overed with the other half of the slab. (5) The round pencils cut out. (6

es it round or oval or six-sided, as the case may be, rubs it smooth, and varnishes it, and then, with gold leaf or silve

il itself, or into a nickel tip, or drawn over the end like a cap, so that any one's special whim may be gratified. Indeed, however hard to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit

od will often split in sharpening, and the lead is of poor materials so badly mixed that it may write blacker in