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Is the pencil underrated? Tim Harford examines the role pencils have played in developing our world, and finds out why some writers have called them a "miracle of the free market". Do they have a point?

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10 minutes

Last on

Mon 24 Jun 201903:50GMT
BBC World Service South Asia

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Image credit

Graphite pencils (Credit: Benoit Tessier/Reuters)

Sources

Henry David Thoreau - The Maine Woods (1864)

Henry Petroski - The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance, Faber and Faber London 1989

The Pencil Making Process - Pencils.com

Leonard Read "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read" The Freeman 1958

Milton Friedman, Free to Choose, PBS 1980

Graphite - Geology.com

Eric Voice "History of the Manufacture of Pencils" 1950 Transactions of the Newcomen Society

John Quiggin - I, Pencil, Product of the Mixed Economy

Broadcasts

  • Sat 22 Jun 201904:50GMT
    BBC World Service except East and Southern Africa & South Asia
  • Sat 22 Jun 201913:50GMT
    BBC World Service News Internet
  • Sun 23 Jun 201914:50GMT
    BBC World Service except Americas and the Caribbean, East Asia & South Asia
  • Sun 23 Jun 201921:50GMT
    BBC World Service except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
  • Sun 23 Jun 201922:50GMT
    BBC World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
  • Mon 24 Jun 201903:50GMT
    BBC World Service South Asia

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