The Point of it All - History of the Pencil

It can write under water, in outer space and on almost any surface. It’s been used to solve complex equations, create striking works of art and has been sucked on by schoolkids in a million exams. And it’s the weapon of choice for crossword warriors the world over. But let’s get to the point …

By Michael Franco

From Discovery Channel Magazine

When a passer-by spotted a black substance clinging to the roots of an oak tree upturned in a storm in Borrowdale, England in 1565, he couldn’t have imagined that he’d just stumbled upon something that would change the world.

Actually, his first thought was that this hard, black substance would be perfect for marking his sheep. But it wasn’t long before the graphite he’d found was being cut into rods and wrapped in string that could be unwound. Later, the rods were inserted into wooden cases and the pencil was written into existence.

The practicality, utility and portability of the pencil is something we take for granted, but at one time it was considered as revolutionary as the personal computer. It made writing convenient, and in one stroke replaced a range of cumbersome tools including charred sticks, metal wires, wax-covered stone tablets and messy inks.

The graphite in the Borrowdale deposit was of an extremely high quality, and by the early 1600s, England’s "black lead" was being widely exported.

So lucrative was the trade that when sufficient reserves had been extracted, mines were often flooded to keep scavengers out.

But this rich vein of graphite eventually began to wear out. France, which in the late 1700s was fighting several European countries, including Britain, in what were known as the French Revolutionary Wars, suffered a particular shortage of pencils due to an economic blockade against it.

To solve this problem, Frenchman Nicolas-Jacques Conté invented a way to use lower-quality graphite from other mines, grind it to a fine powder, combine it with clay and then bake it to produce pencil lead. Increasing the clay content gave a harder and lighter pencil, while increasing the graphite made a softer and darker pencil. This set the stage for the different grades of pencils we use today.

The Conté Method was guarded like a prized family recipe, so wouldbe copycats had to derive their own formulas. Those looking to get rich quick, like "bunglers" (anyone who was working outside of one of the allimportant labour guilds) in Germany resorted to selling pencils with only an inch or two of graphite, or even fake blackened wood sticks that only looked like pencils.

Demand pushed innovation and soon the German Lothar von Faber mastered the Conté process and began creating quality pencils that would cement the name of Faber- Castell – as the company is now known – as one of the world’s greatest pencil-makers.

Meanwhile, as the 18th century waned in the United States, a schoolgirl from Massachusetts whose name is lost to history had been given some Borrowdale graphite. She pounded it to a powder, combined it with glue and encased it in an elder branch, making the New World’s first pencil. Author Henry David Thoreau, himself the son of a pencil-maker, in the mid-1830s improved upon her invention by deducing what Conté had arrived at through chemical analysis; Thoreau combined poor-quality American graphite with clay to make some of the finest pencils available in the young country.

By the late 1800s, approximately 240,000 pencils were being consumed daily in America alone. And an enterprising Hyman Lipman attached a rubber eraser to a pencil in 1858 and patented it. Prior to that, bread was used to remove graphite marks. Slowly but steadily, the pencil-making processes began to be automated and this mass production began to take a toll on the trees.

The Point of it All - History of the Pencil

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