⌛🪶 Why core of pencil is called "lead"? 🤔
Do you know why the core of the pencil is called "lead"?
(Turn on images to enjoy the story)
The Origin of Pencil✏️
The origin of "pencil" dates back to the 16th century when a large deposit of graphite was discovered in England. This particular deposit of graphite was extremely pure and solid, and it could easily be made into sticks.
In those times Chemistry as a science was in its very initial stages, and the large deposit of graphite was thought to be the ore of lead. It was called "Plumbago" meaning ore of lead in Latin. (If you remember from your school times, the symbol of the element lead — Pb comes from Latin Plumbum). Even today many people have the misconception of pencil ore contains actual lead (Pb).
Another closely related story to this is about the original uses of graphite. Before it could be used as a writing instrument, graphite found its way into mold making for cannonballs. The mines of graphite were secured by the rulers and heavily guarded. A lot of smuggling and fights followed.
For making it usable as a writing instrument it was quickly realized that it had to be enclosed in some sort of encasement. It was initially wrapped with string or sheepskin (shown in the photo above). For a long period, England enjoyed a monopoly over graphite pencils, until a method of reconstituting the graphite powder was found in 1662 in Germany.
Further, the first modern pencil was developed in neither England nor Germany. And not surprisingly, the catalyst for this development was, like many other things — a war!
During the French Revolution, England and Germany blocked their supply of high-quality graphite to France. An officer in Napoleon's army tasked Nicolas-Jacques Conté — a prolific inventor to find a solution. Conté ground impure, low-quality graphite, mixed it with wet clay, shaped the mixture into rods, and then baked them.
This method of manufacture, which had been earlier discovered by the Austrian Joseph Hardtmuth, the founder of the Koh-I-Noor (one of the oldest stationery companies in the world) in 1790, remains in use. In 1802, the production of graphite leads from graphite and clay was patented by the Koh-I-Noor company in Vienna.
This method of mixing clay and graphite also lead to the hardness scale that we have gotten used to. When a lower proportion of clay is mixed, the resulting core is soft and leaves darker marks (due to more graphite depositing on the paper).
Pencils in United States 🇺🇸
Until American Revolution, all pencils in the US were imported. William Munroe, a cabinetmaker in Concord, Massachusetts, made the first American wood pencils in 1812.
Munroe perfected his skills of making pencils over 10 year period and figured out how to make his machinery fabricate the wooden pencils efficiently in his old textile factory, creating the first and the most successful pencil company in the United States.
What about erasers?
In the early days of pencils, people used balled-up lumps of old bread to erase their mistakes. (Third image above).
But in 1770, clergyman-chemist Joseph Priestley noticed that a strange gum harvested from trees in South America was particularly good at removing pencil marks. Because some rubbing was necessary, Priestley called the stuff "rubber."
On March 30, 1858, Hymen Lipman received the first patent for attaching an eraser to the end of a pencil.
Mechanical Pencil
The first patent for a refillable pencil with a lead-propelling mechanism was issued to Sampson Mordan and John Isaac Hawkins in Britain in 1822.
Between 1822 and 1874, more than 160 patents were registered pertaining to a variety of improvements to mechanical pencils. The first spring-loaded mechanical pencil was patented in 1877 and a twist-feed mechanism was developed in 1895.
In 1915 Tokuji Hayakawa, a metalworker from Japan designed the "Ever-Ready Sharp Pencil", and nearly the same time in the US, Charles R. Keeran developed a similar pencil that would be the precursor of most of today's pencils.
Keeran's design was ratchet-based (similar to ones we use), whereas Hayakawa's was screw-based.
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Just imagine the number of people who have contributed in the development of something that looks so simple to us, now.
Next time you use a pencil or see a friend using one, you will have this story to share. :)
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See you next week!
-Arjit