In my experience there are three types of pencil sharpeners, excluding a sharp knife:
- the razor blade attached at an angle from a hole little ones that you rotate yourself described by mollusk.
- the standard wall or suction mount ones that have a crank that attaches (via gears) to a cylindrical screw type mechanism with sharpened screwishnesses that attack the to be sharpened pencil
- the electric ones that eat up pencils like bugs bunny on a carrot binge.
I hope this list of pencil sharpeners will enlight and bemuse those new to the subject... Does anyone recall standing in line to use the sharpener in grade school?