THERMOS FLASKS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 191, 10 December 1941, Page 2

THERMOS FLASKS

FOR TANK CORPS PENCILS

RROTECT THEM FROM THE HEAT

Special pencils used by the Tank Corps in Libya have to lie kept in thermos flasks else the heat would melt themChinagraph is their name: they are made of a soft, waxy substance and used for tracings on transparent material like glass or cellophane, and also for marking the silk of barrage balloons. They are supplied to R.A.F. pilots at operational headquarters as ■well as to the Tank Corns, and other Army Units and the war demand for them is so big that overseas orders are now refused. A cheque from India for £100 Tor a consignment of them had, with regrets, to be returned from London a Jew weeks ago. The war is eating up British pencils at a colossal pace. Apart from the Services and Government departments, they are essential to the making of aeroplanes, tanks, ships and munitions. Last year the British Government bought 14,400,000 of them; 1.'50,321,1)00 more went to the rest of the country mainly to factories producing war requirements and 11,929,314 were shipped overseas. Placed end to end they would go almost round the Equator—2o,o2o miles, 214 yards all told. The British pencil industry has therefore had to put itself on a war footing, reducing some 125 varieties to little over, 20 for certain of which the demand has gone up 1000 per cent since 1939.