Vintage A.W. Farber-Castell 52/20 Pencil Sharpener available @ Time’s Tin Cup !
Before mechanical gadgets were made to sharpen pencils, they were sharpened with knives or sandpaper. The mechanical gadgets came about in 1828. A French mathematician, Bernard Lassimonne patented the first. It was a block of wood with metal files that would grind the edges of the pencil tip. A more efficient mechanical gadget was developed in 1896 that had two milling disks that rotated within their respective axes around the tip of the pencil.
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