To Write a Mockingbird

I absolutely love this story that I just listened to on NPR, especially after the weekend that I just had (which I will undoubtedly blog about later). A recent article in DISCOVER magazine made the claim that the standard pencil can write 45,000 words. However, this had yet to be tested. Enter Keith Eldred, who led a team to transcribe one of the greatest books of all-time, To Kill A Mockingbird.

He tested the theory and what he found is that one standard yellow pencil was able to transcribe all 100,388 words of To Kill A Mockingbird.”

When asked why he chose this book, his response was:

“It was the first one that came to mind. I think for one thing we knew that this was going to be a big task and so we needed to have a book that was worthy of an effort like this.”

-Keith Eldred, pencil tester

http://www.towriteamockingbird.org/