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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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
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 2019 04:50GMTBBC World Service except East and Southern Africa & South Asia
- Sat 22 Jun 2019 13:50GMTBBC World Service News Internet
- Sun 23 Jun 2019 14:50GMTBBC World Service except Americas and the Caribbean, East Asia & South Asia
- Sun 23 Jun 2019 21:50GMTBBC World Service except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
- Sun 23 Jun 2019 22:50GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Mon 24 Jun 2019 03:50GMTBBC World Service South Asia
Podcast
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