• @[email protected]
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    6 months ago

    Reminds me of the time a bunch of people were fascinated with a pen that writes up side down and someone blurted out ‘pencils’. This was after some Seinfeld episode about a pen.

    • @[email protected]
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      106 months ago

      Is this the old joke about American astronauts spending $1M to invent a pen that writes in space while Russian cosmonauts just used pencils?

      There’s technically a reason why you wouldn’t want to use graphite in space (the particles don’t just fall to the floor, they float around in the air and get into places they shouldn’t), but also NASA is notorious for going through ten different private contractors to do what a proper public sector organization would internalize.

      • @[email protected]
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        6 months ago

        Also, Pilot created that pen as a marketing ploy without having an official contract. NASA did pick it up, but IIRC, Pilot technically lost money on the project. Of course, marketing costs money, so they were fine with that.

      • @[email protected]
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        56 months ago

        Yeah imagine trying to sharpen a pencil in space.

        In my fourth grade computer lab, they didn’t even allow pencils around the Apple IIe’s. (Yeah I’m old lol.)