Pencil sharpener research

When was it illegal to own a pencil sharpener?

If you owned a pencil sharpener in early 20th century Britain, you had a hot little piece of contraband. At the time, the supplies of the red cedar that had historically been used in pencils was getting perilously low, so the government briefly outlawed pencil sharpeners in order to limit waste from overzealous sharpening. Eventually the mechanical pencil and the discovery of incense-cedar’s usefulness in making pencils solved this problem, and pencil sharpeners became street legal once again.