SpaceBanter.com - View Single Post - Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.

**Greg Goss**

wrote:

How much better, faster, and cheaper has the pencil become since it's
invention in the 16th century?

Pencils that don't need to be sharpened are only about a century old.
(Electronics company Sharp started that way.)

When I was a kid, my mother had one that cost $18 and took a minute or
so to withdraw a new lead into its body. Other than lacking the
magnet (hers could be stuck onto stuff for convenient access), better
pencils are now about the price of six wooden pencils. I haven't
sharpened a pencil other than on an "emergency" basis for 45 years.

Pencils were a nickel when I was a kid and a dime now. Since I was a
kid, the value of that dime has decreased tenfold. So pencils are now
five times cheaper than in the sixties. I assume technology did it.
(Perhaps containerized TRANSPORT technology to bring us the product of
chinese semi-slaves.)
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.