Pencil Sharpener, circa 1908

Inventors in the late-19th and early-20th centuries devised ways to sharpen pencils with a turn of a crank. Some sharpeners used rotating milling disk; others used a spinning abrasive, like sandpaper or a steel file. The Automatic Pencil Sharpening Company manufactured this device that used still another way to create a pencil point -- turning blades.