Caran d'Ache
Swiss Pencil-Sharpening Machine (1933)Founded in Geneva in 1915, when Arnold Schweitzer purchased the Ecridor Pencil Factory, Caran d’Ache is a Swiss manufacturer of art and luxury writing instruments. Schweitzer named his company after the nickname of a French satiric political cartoonist, Karandash (the Russian word for pencil).
In 1933 Caran d’Ache launched its first a sharpener: the Swiss Pencil-Sharpening Machine, which weighed in at 1.1 kilograms. At the time, dull pencils were commonly pointed with small, hand-cranked prism sharpeners, which created brittle and crooked tips. The Swiss-made utensil produced a perfectly pointed tip. Eighty-two years down the line, the time-tested tool still looks the same and functions similarly.
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