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posted by martyb on Thursday June 18 2015, @02:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the do-not-use-on-a-pool-cue dept.

This spring, an 80-year-old Japanese chalk company went out of business. Nobody, perhaps, was as sad to see the company go as mathematicians who had become obsessed with Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk, the so-called "Rolls Royce of chalk."

With whiteboards and now computers taking over classrooms, the company's demise seemed to mark the end of an era.

Being neither a mathematician nor a chalk artist, I heard about Hagoromo through my friend Dan, a mathematician finishing up his Ph.D. at Stanford. He recently appeared on a Japanese TV special about the demise of Hagoromo Bungu Co., where a TV crew came out to Stanford to interview mathematicians about the legendary chalk. One professor described hoarding enough of the stuff to keep him in chalk for the next 15 years. Dan is in the special too, calling the end of Hagoromo "a tragedy for mathematics."

Okay, he was obviously joking. But it is true that mathematicians are fanatics for this obscure Japanese chalk. Here you can see a long discussion online where mathematicians are hunting for Hagoromo chalk suppliers in the U.S. Satyan Devadoss, a Williams College math professor, even wrote a blog post calling it "dream chalk." He explained:

There have been rumors about a dream chalk, a chalk so powerful that mathematics practically writes itself; a chalk so amazing that no incorrect proof can be written using this chalk. I can finally say, after months of pursuit, that such a chalk indeed exists.

Similar reactions have been noted in the past from artists about the demise of Pearl Paints, or from photographers about Polaroid film. Any mathematicians care to weigh in?

[Editor's note: Here is a story link for those clamoring for one.. :) ]


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  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday June 18 2015, @08:08PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Thursday June 18 2015, @08:08PM (#197959) Homepage Journal

    Where is "here"? When I was at school at the University of Michigan everything outside of the new Computer Science building was chalkboards. I graduated from there in 2010 and went to Oakland University, where the Engineering department was still all chalkboards.

    One nice thing about chalk is you know how much is left. I swear the dry erase markers have unionized and decide to all run out of ink at the same time!

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