The Portland Pudgy safety dinghy is a self-rescue boat, even without the optional inflatable exposure canopy and other survival gear. With the exposure canopy, sea anchor, and sail kit, the Portland Pudgy is an unsinkable, dynamic lifeboat.
The âlead pencil,â containing no lead, was invented in 1564, a turning point in pencil history. Although civilizations were centuries away from making mechanical pencil history, the pencil invented in the sixteenth century advanced the writing instrument. Before 1564, artists mainly used stylus-like pencils. The history of the pencil owes a dept to the discovery of a graphite mine in Cumbria, England.
According to the folks at Pencil.com (who ought to know) pencils have been around in various forms since the 16th century. Long acknowledged as an improvement over earlier writing implements, sharpening them had always been kind of a hassle; whittling with a knife requires a skilled hand. But then in 1828 a Frenchman named Bernard Lassimone invented the first mechanical pencil sharpener. As noted by The Early Office Museum, this sharpener employed small metal files set at 90 degrees in a block of wood and worked to scrape and grind the edges of the pencilâs tip.