For years, the two men battled it out in the courts, in the shops, and occasionally physically with each other. Not without his wicked British sense of humor, Peter Longfellow’s Ace Pencil Company happily named their pencil the #2, but insinuated that it’s higher number was a sign that it was a further development and refinement of the barbaric #1. Johann’s Majestic Implements Concern produced his extremely masculine #1 pencil – the number being a reference to it’s unrivaled excellence. There is also the curious matter of fire brigades being sent to the workshop every week for the next 2 months on some pretense or another.ĭespite all the backbiting, or perhaps because of it, the two estranged partners each founded rival pencil companies during this time. He is said to have covered Johann’s horse in blue paint – a slur which at the time cast doubt on Johann’s sexuality and ability to sire children. Longfellow was hardly guiltless in this escapade either. There are rumors of dead dogs hurled through windows, of slandered wives and unreturned Christmas cards. Not content to simply un-employ his former student, Mr Burm went to extraordinary lengths to ruin Peter. With the rift over graphite hardness growing every day, Johann expelled his apprentice from the shop while cursing his family to darkness and dispair. This is what he had come to America for, and he’d be damned if his writing instrument was going to be as weak as a lily-white Prussian.īetrayal is never a kind business, but Peter’s split with Johann was an especially sordid affair. Thus, the material should be hard like their lives, require strength to make a decent mark, and should only be sharpened by a good stabbing knife. Johann, being of proud Germanic stock, knew that this new implement would be used by real men doing real work. Peter believed the graphite should be soft enough to easily mark paper and sharpened with a small razor. Before long, they had a rough concept of what we would know today as a pencil. So on a slow day between making nightstands and battleships, Johann and his assistant Peter Longfellow started to experiment with ways of impregnating alder wood with soft graphite. In the 1846, Johann Burm was an aspiring woodsmith struggling to mark his work before making his cuts. But why? Why this writing instrument hegemony? How did the #2 pencil establish its monarchy, and what the hell happened to the #1 pencil? I set out to find the answers, and it almost drove me to madness. #2 Pencils – like bad metaphors they are everywhere. Be warned, you will forever be a different person upon reading this – kinda the ultimate Spoiler Warning right there… But it is a tale that needs to be told, for the good of all those who hear it. Many Bothan’s died to bring us this information. Today’s story comes to you at great cost.
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