Do Pencils Inspire You?

Did pencils lead to the space pen?

Pencils can write in zero gravity and so were used on early American and Russian space missions -- even though NASA engineers worried about the flammability of wood pencils in a pure-oxygen atmosphere, not to mention the menace of floating bits of graphite. Those concerns inspired Paul Fisher to develop the pressurized Fisher Space Pen in 1965. After the Apollo 1 fire, NASA banned pencils in favor of his pen on manned spaceflights.