Dennis Baron reminds us of the taken for granted convenience that a petite technology adds to life. The article "From Pencils to Pixels" not only reveals the easy communicating power the pencil provides once between our fingers, it also examines the role of other writing technologies such as the printing press, telephone, and computer. Baron traces the evolution of writing technologies as they are adopted into society and utilized as communication devices with the help of various sources.  Many of the arguments in From Pencils to Pixels used to showcase the pencil as an engineering technology are rooted texts within The Pencil: A History of design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski. Both Baron and Petroski’s bibliographies’ show a large assortment of sources, exemplifying how academic works are linked and synthesized through previous works. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance is over three hundred pages long , divided into twenty two chapters that are intended to contribute to our understanding of engineering.  Petroski specifically uses the wood-cased pencil as the quintessence of engineering tools because it is simply “something we can all hold in our hands, experiment with, and wonder about” (x). He claims the questions that emerge as one looks at a pencil in respect to origin, use, development, and quality are all basic questions of general engineering processes. Baron also acknowledges the pencil’s existence as a resulting product of engineering genius.  Baron picked Henry Petroski’s book because it analyzes the pencil from a historical, technological, and social perspective.

The table of contents alone shows Baron might have easily used this book as both an outline for how to approach the pencil as a technology and a reference for facts on its developmental history and manufacturing processes over time. After checking other sources in his bibliography, this book is the only source of its kind with a sole focus from multiple perspectives about the pencil. It is  safe to assume that in the absence of this source many of Barron’s ideas about the pencil would not have been nurtured into existence. The Pencil: History of Design and Circumstance  was equally important to Barons work for both style and support.

Baron takes a parallel course to Petroski in presenting his argument about writing technology as a whole through the simplicity of the pencil.  Petroski justifies the technique of examining a greater topic through the study of a small topic in saying “a study of the pencil is a study of engineering” (xi). Petroski chose “to approach engineering through the history of symbolism of the common pencil” rather than directly talk about engineering in its entirety (xi). Similarly, Baron adopts this technique in explaining the computer’s integration into the socially accepted realm of communication technologies through the course taken by the pencil. Both authors use the path laid by the simpler device, a pencil, to guide the reader toward understanding potentially complex topics, computers and engineering.

Baron also mimics Petroski in acknowledging how desensitized people have become to the pencil’s technological characteristics. Petroski illustrates how easily forgotten the pencil is in very first chapter “What we Forget.”  He uses Henry David Thoreau’s list of essential items for his out door excursion, which omitted the necessity of a pencil, as proof that the pencil is taken for granted. In the context of the first chapter, Petroski presents Thoreau as one who utilized the pencil for personal use rather than just manufactured it for profit. Baron includes Thoreau in his article but mainly in explaining the early production techniques of the pencil. He portrays Thoreau as a pencil business man one who “disparaged the information superhighway of his day.” Essentially in Baron’s work one would think Thoreau didn’t support the use of the very item he manufactured because of its contribution to the “information superhighway.”  When according to Petroski, the pencil was a common companion of his. Although a minor detail it changes how one conceptualizes the pencil’s acceptance among its own creators.

Aside from the history and facts surrounding the engineering of a pencil, Pencil: A History of design and Circumstance also includes a twenty two page bibliography of diverse sources. One of which was The Evolution of Technology by George Basalla. Even as a sub-reference of Barron’s, concepts in The Evolution of Technology still support claims made in From Pixels to Pencils.Basalla’s argument in the chapter “Continuity and Discontinuity” examines how and where the progression of technology becomes reliant on some form of scientific contribution. He first explains that technology initially existed independent of science. Similar to Barron, he looks at simple technology devices, such as cave man stone knives, to explain his main point. From this example, Basalla reasons that technological advances are often at first the result of human experience and as that technology continues to develop, it will eventually need the aid of an applied science to achieve a closer version of perfection. Barron’s article shows this process through the evolution of writing devices. It notes that writing in itself is a technology and in its most primitive stages was executed through raw natural resources like stones. However, as time passed and writing continued to flourish, those raw resources were enhanced or replaced through numerous scientific modifications. Barron outlines the work of engineers like Thoreau, showing how his growing understanding of graphite as an element allowed for the most significant improvement of the pencil as a writing tool.Writing moved beyond hand held devices into the realm of computer applications. This switch of writing devices over time from rocks, to pencils, to pixels mirrors the concept presented by Basalla. Writing technologies were not necessarily the result of science in the beginning but their prolonged existence and durability depended on the application of scientific notions. Basalla’s view portrays “technology” as the resulting physical embodiment of knowledge created by resourcefulness gained through human experience. However, longevity of technology is aided by science once human resourcefulness is not enough. The Pixels aspect of Barron’s argument for example highlights where science intervened with writing as a technology.

Petroski’s work goes beyond supporting Barron’s claims; it essentially is the base for majority of the claims relating to the pencil. Basallla’s work shows a more indirect but relevant link about the role of human and scientific applications in the development of a technology. The fluid connection between sources shows certain common truths among the studies done on a given topic. In Barron’s case, both is original source and even his sources source maintained relevance and support to his claims. However, the source of the source connection provided more conceptual rather than factual relevance. The information of the second source was still applicable to Baron’s article but not as blatantly as the original source listed on his bibliography. It seems that the deeper one dives into a sea of sources, the less likely he is to find direct focused streams to the topic main land.

Basalla, George. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Petroski, Henry. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance.Knopf, 1992.

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