Word: pencils
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...MOST DINNER FORKS HAVE FOUR tines? How did the zipper come about? Henry Petroski, the inquisitive engineering professor from Duke who gave us a history of The Pencil (it's more interesting than you would imagine), provides the answers in a lively new treatise on design called THE EVOLUTION OF USEFUL THINGS (Knopf; $24). In a lifetime, notes the author, the average adult will encounter 20,000 or more everyday objects, most of which are taken for granted. Petroski argues that form follows failure rather than function, meaning that the inadequacies of existing things have inspired inventors...
...LOVE SONG, OF COURSE. Aladdin the street rat is taking Princess Jasmine on a flight into the liberating skyland of first love. But the Tim Rice lyric, riding the lush carpet of Alan Menken's melody, also defines the sorcery of movie animation. Artists wave the wand of a pencil over a piece of paper and, like the most genial genie, create unbelievable sights, indescribable feelings. "Don't you dare close your eyes!/ A hundred thousand things to see!/ Hold your breath, it gets better...
...Neolithic climber was also armed with a tiny flint dagger with a wooden handle; a net of grass, which possibly served as a carrying bag; and a pencil- size stone-and-linden tool that was probably used to sharpen arrowheads and blades. Two birchbark canisters may have been used to carry the embers from a fire, Egg speculates. The Iceman apparently toted much of his gear in a primitive rucksack with a U-shaped wooden frame...
...instance, Higbie is interested in how exactly stories of the war with Troy were composed, a subject few others study with her particular focus. "As best we understand it at the moment," says Higbie, "these are poets who wrote without pencil and paper, in a world that wasn't so intensely literate as ours...
...test. Early in the morning, she falls asleep and wakes up 45 minutes into the test. She runs into the hallway in her pajamas to find her proctor. The door locks behind her. The Harvard police come to open the door. But they don't have a number two pencil...