WASHINGTON, March 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
RUBBED OUT
Profile America --Friday, March 25th. The fact that pencils have erasers is supposed to indicate that no one is perfect. But it's doubtful that people were perfect before this month in 1858. That's when Hyman Lipman was granted a patent for a pencil with an incorporated rubber eraser. Lipman's eraser could be sharpened, as it protruded from the wood sheath at the end opposite the graphite. The familiar wood-encased pencil dates back to 1662, when they were mass-produced in Nuremberg, Germany. More than 350 years on, and despite all of our electronic marvels, more than 14 billion pencils are produced globally every year. U.S. annual production is around 2 billion, and annual sales of pencils and art supplies comes to around $1.5 billion. You can find more facts about America's people, places and economy, from the American Community Survey, at www.census.gov.
Sources:
Hyman Lipman/accessed 1/14/2016: http://pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/Pencil.html
Pencil facts/access 1/14/2016: https://www.pencils.net/didyaknow.cfm
Development/accessed 1/14/2016: http://pencils.com/pencil-history/
Revenues/NAICS 339942: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ASM_2011_31VS201&prodType=table
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).
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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
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