The History of the Pencil

The common pencil used the most by people is a thin, round cylinder consisting of wood which is bound permanently around the core of writing material inside of the pencil. Pencils are held in the hand and are used in order to write and draw on paper. The writing is made possible by the use of graphite that is inside of the wooden sheath that covers the pencil. Here are some interesting facts about the pencil that many people may not know about.

The archetypal pencil that was used back in Ancient Egyptian and Roman times consisted of a metal stick that was very thin, and it was used to "write" on papyrus, which was the earlier form of paper, which was used way back in history.

Graphite was discovered back around 1565 in Borrowdale Parish, Cumbria, England and the residents there used this graphite to mark their herds of sheep. The graphite was real solid and it could be made into sticks very easily. The black writing material inside of the pencil is called lead still today as it was back in earlier times even though pencils never had any lead in them. The word for pencil in German is Bleistift, that means lead stick.

Hymen Lipman received the first patent for an eraser that would be attached to the top of pencils on March 30, 1585 and in 1862, he sold that patent for a whopping $100,000 to Joseph Reckendorfer. The metal band around the eraser of a pencil is called a ferrule.

The pencils that are manufactured today in industries are made by using a mixture of clay powders and grinding the graphite to a fine powder, and then by adding water to this mixture and forming the mixture into strings that resemble spaghetti, and then placing them in a kiln to fire them. After they are removed from the kiln, the "spaghetti" strings get dipped in either molten wax or oil and the oil or wax then goes through the tiny holes of the material and the ending process results in to a smoother writing implement. Next, a plank made out of cedar or juniper that has long grooves that run parallel on it are cut into "slats". Now the strings of graphite "spaghetti" are then inserted into the grooves or slats that were cut. Next, another slat is placed on top of this and glued together and then the entire piece is cut into pencils, then theses individually cut pencils are painted and or varnished and ready to be packaged and shipped out to be sold around the world.

Sources:

Wikipedia.com

www.edinformatics.com

www.pencils.com