A rectangular wooden stick was chopped in half lengthwise. A groove was then cut into one of the halves to make room for a slim stick of black lead. The three pieces—the black lead and the two halves of wood—were glued together with the black lead inside. The result was a rectangular writing implement and the world's first wooden pencils.
This was a big deal. Wood was sturdier than paper or string, which needed to be unraveled as the black lead wore down. The new casing, probably cedar, could be carved and sharpened with a knife as the black lead shortened. Thus the phrase "sharpen your pencil" was born. Not long after its discovery, black lead shot up in value—it was used as an ingredient in making cannonballs as well. The English government wanted in on the profits.
It took control of the Borrowdale black lead deposit and set up mines around town with notoriously strict oversight; workers were searched at the end of each day to prevent illicit sales. By , the government passed a law declaring the theft of black lead a felony.
Black lead deposits were subsequently found elsewhere around Europe, but the English mines produced the hardest and darkest black lead in the world. Its quality was so superior that England became the leading pencil and graphite producer. The government took rigorous efforts to conserve its black lead supply, only mining for about six weeks every five years to avoid extracting too much of the precious material, according to Henry Petroski's The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance.
By the late s, the old-fashioned lead-alloy stylus was hardly used. Other than the pen, which stuck around because of its advantages over the pencil in elegance and permanence, black lead became the go-to writing tool. Pencil-makers started calling it simply "lead," which is the reason people still talk about pencil "lead" even though the graphite inside their no. Other terms would pop up as well, namely "plumbago," derived from plumbum , the Latin term for lead.
This name would stick throughout the s, until people started calling the crystalline carbon substance "graphite," a word derived from the Greek term graphein , meaning "to write. England's reign as pencil king waned in the s. The Borrowdale mines were running out of graphite.
The country went to war with France in This conflict—a prelude to the Napoleonic Wars—would change the world map and the global balance of power, but not before it shook up the pencil industry.
At the dawn of the fighting, England imposed an embargo on France, which had been one of the primary importers of English pencils. While it may have made sense militarily, the embargo had a nasty side effect on England's commerce. France suddenly suffered a shortage of pencils and graphite.
That meant either finding a substitute for graphite or coming up with a suitable mixture of graphite and another substance. The story goes that it took the inventor just a few days to come up with an answer.
He mixed the two with water and let them harden in rectangular molds so they could be fired in a kiln. More clay made for a harder pencil lead and a lighter mark on paper.
Less clay meant a softer lead and a darker mark. The pencil lead was glued into the groove, and another piece of wood was glued on top of the lead. This invention spurred by necessity became a handy way to create specialized pencils for writers and artists who wanted different shades of lead.
Companies around Europe heard about the mixture but struggled to reverse-engineer the secret system and began experimenting with alternatives. Some of history's most famous writers, inventors and architects were staunch pencil users. Across the Atlantic, Americans had already been playing with mixtures of materials because of England's dwindling graphite supplies and the trade troubles caused by the War of Americans used all sorts of ingredients.
The family of Walden author Henry David Thoreau, for instance, mixed graphite with bayberry wax or spermaceti, a wax from sperm whales commonly used to make candles at the time. The Thoreau pencil company was founded in Concord in , shortly after Thoreau's uncle found a graphite deposit in Bristol, NH. Long before he was living alone or writing transcendentalist literature, Henry David Thoreau spent his childhood helping his father make pencils.
In England, pencils continue to be made from whole sawn graphite. But with the mass production of pencils, they are getting drastically more popular in many countries with each passing decade. As demands rise, appetite for graphite soars. Q11 :In Britain , pencils are not produced any more. In England , pencils continue to be made from whole sawn graphite.
However, much in contrast with its intellectual application in producing pencils, graphite was also widely used in the military. During the reign of Elizabeth I, Borrowdale graphite was used as a refractory material to line moulds for cannonballs, resulting in rounder, smoother balls that could be fired farther, contributing to the strength of the English navy.
This particular deposit of graphite was extremely pure and soft, and could easily be broken into sticks. Because of its military importance, this unique mine and its production were strictly controlled by the Crown. But it is also a fact that their counterparts in the United States used pencils in the outer space before real zero gravity pencil was invented.
Q American astronauts did not use pencil in outer space. They preferred mechanical pencils, which produced fine line, much clearer than the smudgy lines left by the grease pencils that Russians favored. But the lead tips of these mechanical pencils broke often. But despite the fact that the Americans did invent zero gravity pencils later, they stuck to mechanical pencils for many years. Against the backcloth of a digitalized world, the prospect of pencils seems bleak.
In reality, it does not. Q Pencils are unlikely to be used in the future. The application of pencils has by now become so widespread that they can be seen everywhere, such as classrooms, meeting rooms and art rooms, etc. A spectrum of users are likely to continue to use it into the future: students to do math works, artists to draw on sketch pads, waiters or waitresses to mark on order boards, make-up professionals to apply to faces, and architects to produce blue prints.
The possibilities seem limitless. If you want to make a better world like this, please contact us. Write your answers in boxes on your answer sheet. Graphite was found under a 1 Answer: tree Locate in Borrowdale, it was dirty to use because it was 2 Answer: soft Locate. The higher the B number, the more graphite gets left on the paper. The strange thing about graphite is that it is a form of pure carbon that is one of the softest solids known, and one of the best lubricants because the six carbon atoms that link to form a ring can slide easily over adjacent rings.
Yet, if the atomic structure is changed, there is another crystalline form of pure carbon, diamond, that is one of the hardest solids known. An interesting question is to ask how long a straight line could be drawn with a typical HB pencil before the lead was exhausted.
The thickness of graphite left on a sheet of paper by a soft 2B pencil is about 20 nanometers and a carbon atom has a diameter of 0. The pencil lead is about 1 mm in radius and therefore? If the length of the pencil is 15 cm, then the volume of graphite to be spread out on a straight line is ?
They made plant, animal, and mineral inks and used it for painting on silk and paper. The best ink they used was made from pine sap made from trees that were between 50 and years old.
A ballpoint pen is a writing instrument which features a tip that is automatically refreshed with ink. It consists of a precisely formed metal ball seated in a socket below a reservoir of ink. As the pen is moved along a writing surface, ink is delivered. Another way to recycle pens, pencils, markers and highlighters is to send them directly to TerraCycle. This recycling program collects nonrecyclables or hard-to-recycle waste and converts them into materials and products.
As long as the chunk of foam you use is large enough, it should fit snugly, and the eraser needs to touch the metal part of the brush in order for the foam to be conductive when you touch the metal body of the stylus.
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