lead holder.com

Leadholder can be broadly defined as any durable instrument that is designed to hold and be refillable with consumable pieces of graphite so that the graphite can be conveniently used for drawing or writing. Within this definition there are subsets such as porte-crayons, mechanical pencils, and drafting leadholders. This website is primarily concerned with drafting leadholders, which are commonly called by draftsmen in the US as simply leadholders. Koh-I-Noor Technigraph: This pencil is the standard by which all other drafting leadholders are judged. Because leadholders of this type are the specialized tools of draftsmen and artists, they are generally unknown to those outside this coterie. You can probably find one or two models at your local art supply store if you look hard enough. Not long ago you would have been confronted with dozens of makes and styles of these instruments.

From 1965 to 1979 (minus a couple of years working in photo labs) I worked at Boeing as a draftsman. (We later became called drafters.) I had a number of lead holders just like the one above. This was one of our tools of the trade. We sharpened them in lead pointers. I used one, exactly like this, for years.

What a blast from the past! In 1979 my group got 4 CAD (Computer Aided Design) terminals. I got on those as soon as I could and never looked back. This site also has some wonderful ads.

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  thanks to The J-Walk Weblog