The Capsule Pencil

Atlanta's Scripto, Inc. last week put a new pencil on the market that looks like a lead pencil but writes like a ball-point pen. The writing agent is a capsule of liquid graphite which can be erased, although not as quickly or cleanly as lead. Price: 49-c-; refill capsules: 25-c-.

With his new pencil, Scripto President James Vinson Carmichael got the jump on the Parker Pen Co., which ballyhooed its own graphite pencil last month but will take "about 90 days" before beginning distribution.

Jimmy Carmichael started out in politics. He got his LL.B. from Georgia's Emory University ('33), he became a small-town (Marietta, Ga.) lawyer and went to the state legislature. After the war he ran for governor against Herman E. Talmadge, and was beaten under the state's county unit system, although he won the popular vote. After that, he joined Scripto as assistant to the president. A year later he became president, started the company expanding rapidly with ball-point pens, became the second biggest ball-point pen maker (behind Los Angeles' Paper-Mate) and the biggest mechanical pen and pencil maker.

With his capsule pencil, Carmichael hopes to cut deeply into sales of regular pencils, some 1.5 billion of which are sold yearly. Although the capsule model is more expensive, Scripto claims that one cartridge lasts about five times as long as a standard pencil, makes the long-term cost about equal. Biggest advantage: the point will not wear down.

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