Last Thurs­day was Nation­al Pen­cil Day, which com­mem­o­rates, accord­ing to The New York Pub­lic Library (NYPL), “the day in 1858 when Philadel­phia immi­grant Hymen Lip­man patent­ed his inven­tion for a pen­cil with an eras­er on top, cre­at­ing the con­ve­nient­ly-designed pen­cil we know and love.”

Of course, Lip­man’s inven­tion did­n’t take place in a vac­u­um. Through­out the 18th and 19th cen­turies, Amer­i­can inven­tors were hard at work, try­ing to find ways to make improve­ments to the pen­cil, whose his­to­ry traces back to 1564. Dur­ing those ear­ly days of our repub­lic, “Amer­i­can pen­cil-mak­ing was in sor­ry shape,” writes NYPL. “Poor mate­ri­als made domes­tic pen­cils smudgy and frail, in com­par­i­son to their supe­ri­or British coun­ter­parts, which were made of pur­er graphite.” So the press­ing ques­tion became: how to improve the qual­i­ty of the graphite? Enter Hen­ry David Thore­au, Amer­i­ca’s great essay­ist, poet, philoso­pher, abo­li­tion­ist, nat­u­ral­ist and tax resister. And appar­ent­ly inno­va­tor too:

Seek­ing employ­ment after study­ing at Har­vard, [Thore­au] worked at his father’s pen­cil fac­to­ry, which Edward Emer­son — son of Ralph Wal­do Emer­son — recalled as being some­what bet­ter than the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can pen­cil fac­to­ry at the time. Still, Hen­ry David Thore­au aspired to improve the fam­i­ly busi­ness, so he hit the books at the Har­vard Col­lege library to find out more.

…Hav­ing no knowl­edge of chem­istry, Hen­ry David nev­er­the­less came up with a for­mu­la to make a pen­cil rival­ing that made in Europe. It was the first of its kind in Amer­i­ca.

Soon, Thore­au pen­cils were tak­ing over the mar­ket, and the fam­i­ly’s busi­ness grew and grew. Thore­au pen­cils were award­ed twice by Mechan­ic Asso­ci­a­tions and gained a local rep­u­ta­tion in Boston for their qual­i­ty. Ralph Wal­do Emer­son him­self praised them. News of Thore­au’s pen­cils spread quick­ly, and soon, Pet­ros­ki writes, they were “with­out peer in this coun­try.”

Add an eras­er to Thore­au’s pen­cil, and you’ve got Hymen Lip­man’s patent for the pen­cil you’re pret­ty much using today. You can see pic­tures of Thore­au’s pen­cil over at The New York Pub­lic Library.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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via NYPL

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ry David Thore­au on When Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence and Resis­tance Are Jus­ti­fied (1849)

David Rees Presents a Primer on the Arti­sanal Craft of Pen­cil Sharp­en­ing

Pat­ti Smith on Vir­ginia Woolf’s Cane, Charles Dick­ens’ Pen & Oth­er Cher­ished Lit­er­ary Tal­is­mans

David Rees and His One-Man Arti­sanal Pen­cil Sharp­en­ing Ser­vice

Hen­ry David Thore­au on When Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence Against Bad Gov­ern­ments Is Jus­ti­fied: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Pret­ty cool item. A new exhi­bi­tion in New York, called “Gul­liv­er’s Gate,” shrinks the world’s most famous sites–everything from the Taj Mahal to The Great Wall of China–into minia­ture ver­sions of them­selves, rough­ly 87 times small­er than the orig­i­nal. In the video above, you can take a 360 degree tour of parts of the exhi­bi­tion. Click on the clip, swirl around, and check out the tiny cre­ations. It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly neat if you try it on your phone.

Below, find an intro­duc­tion to the project and don’t miss their behind-the-scenes footage.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Not too long ago, we fea­tured for you 4 hours of ambi­ent music cre­at­ed by Moby, all of which you can down­load for free, and use to sleep, med­i­tate, do yoga and gen­er­al­ly not pan­ic. Sound time­ly? Then down­load away.

Per­haps tak­ing a cue from Moby, the Relax Sleep ASMR YouTube chan­nel has also assem­bled a “video” offer­ing 10 hours of Arc­tic ambi­ent music, fea­tur­ing the sounds of the frozen ocean, ice crack­ing, snow falling, [an] ice­break­er idling and [a] dis­tant howl­ing wind sound.”

Click play above and you can enjoy “white noise sounds gen­er­at­ed by the wind and snow falling, com­bined with deep low fre­quen­cies with delta waves from the pow­er­ful … idling engines” of a Polar Ice­break­er. Very chill.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Dr. Weil’s 60-Sec­ond Tech­nique for Falling Asleep

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Cre­ativ­i­ty

Dur­ing the late 1960s, the defense con­trac­tor Lock­heed Cor­po­ra­tion took a strange detour into film­mak­ing and spon­sored a series of short films, each exam­in­ing the per­ils of a par­tic­u­lar hard­core drug. Above, you can watch “Case Study: LSD,” a three-minute short doc­u­ment­ing a young wom­an’s acid trip. Every­thing seems pret­ty groovy, until the 18-year-old pro­tag­o­nist goes to eat a hot dog. That’s when things go hor­ri­bly wrong: the hot dog springs to life, claims it has a wife and sev­en kids to sup­port, and screams bloody mur­der as it gets mer­ci­less­ly ingest­ed. A hor­ror film, if I’ve ever seen one.

You can watch the three oth­er short films in the series here: Case Study: Hero­in, Case Study: Amphet­a­mines, and Case Study: Bar­bi­tu­rates.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­toric LSD Debate at MIT: Tim­o­thy Leary v. Pro­fes­sor Jerome Lettvin (1967)

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Curi­ous Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Won­der­land That Made Drugs Look Like Fun

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed