Origin of pencil

The ancestor of the pencil was born in England, but the English word "pencil" comes from the ancient Roman word "pencinus".

In 1564, a violent storm hit England, knocking down a large tree in Cumberland, exposing a piece of black coal where the roots of the tree used to be, a graphite mother mine.

The local shepherds used strips of this kind to scribble on the sheep to mark them.

Soon, the shrewd urbanites cut the graphite into strips and sold it on the street as "printed stones".

The initial graphite stamping stone has two obvious shortcomings: one is that it contaminates the fingers; the other is that it is easy to break. An unknown genius solved the problem of contamination. The method was like putting a piece of clothing on the graphite imprinted stone, wrapping it tightly with thread and rope. The problem of easy breaking was solved by a craftsman in Bavaria, Germany, It was solved by amateur chemist Caspar Faber in 1761. He stirred together graphite powder with sulfur, antimony, and resin to form the sticky mixture into stick bodies. The resulting mixture is much harder than the pure graphite imprint stone.

As a result, Nicolas Jacques Conte, a famous French chemist and inventor, was ordered to complete the task of finding French graphite and making pencils. Whether spurred by the panic of defeat or by the remarkable respect, Conte made the gamble.

With only a small amount of low-quality graphite raw material, Nichols added some clay to increase the amount, and then baked it in an earthen kiln, which was better than people dreamed, and they made the best "mark" in the world. stick".

By mastering the proportions of mixed clays, Nicholas graded the pencils he produced from hard to soft; in color, the lines drawn by the pencils ranged from light gray to dark black.

Later, William Monroe, a joiner of pure American descent, invented a machine in his shop that could make standard wooden planks of about 6 to 7 inches. Each wood slat is grooved by the machine from start to finish, and the groove depth is exactly the radius of the graphite cylinder. The graphite was then glued together with two pieces of wood punched through the groove and stretched to the right, and this was the first modern pencil.

Standard pencils are produced today that can be drawn 35 miles long, can write at least 45,000 words, and are sharpened 16 times until they are still usable within two inches of the end of the pen. It also comes with a rubber with a yellow metal toe cap attached.

Modern pencils are made from 40 different raw materials, the best graphite is from Sri Lanka, Madagascar and Mexico; the best clay is from Germany; the best eraser is from Malaysia; the best wax is from Brazil; used in machines The egg-sized pebbles that stir graphite and clay in the middle are produced in Belgium and Denmark; and the best, aromatic woods are produced in the United States.

More than 300 different pencils are now produced, including the kind that surgeons use to mark patients for surgery.