How the First Pencil was Made?

About 200 years ago, a French army officer NJ Conte invented first pencil on earth. That time it was called “pencillus” meaning “little tail”, because of its pointed tip. NJ Conte first turned graphite into powder and mixed it with moist clay to make a dough out of it. Then, he rolled many thin sticks from the dough and dried them.

But the black thin sticks by itself were not convenient for writing. So the next idea was to encase it in wood.

Pencil makers like Faber Castle, these days produce thin, wooden rods from trees. They cut it into halves and carve out a thin long space where the lead is placed. After the lead is placed in that space, the two half rods are glued together. The rods are then put into shaping and polishing machine.

Guess What???

Pencils do not really contain lead but the black long stick is called ‘Lead’. WHY??
Because ‘Graphite’ when discovered was called ‘Blacklead’ for a long time due to its resemblance with lead.

What are Graphite and Lead?
Lead is a metal and graphite is a form of carbon. Lead is a soft, silvery metal where as graphite is a fine black powder.

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Posted

May 1, 2012

Facts For Kids, History

Kinooze Learning

Comments

4 responses to “How the First Pencil was Made?”

Esha

August 13, 2012

Which is the world’s darkest pencil?
kinooze

August 14, 2012

Observe the not sharpened edge of your pencil. There is something like “2B” or “HB” written there, this shows how dark a pencil would be. So if you find an “8B” pencil that would be the world’s darkest pencil.
Hridhita

October 23, 2015

Hello , I am 12 years old .And i want to thank this site for providing me information about pencil . As you told that the darkest one is 8 b how other pencils are made ?
Adhiraj Caudhary

August 30, 2022

yo my name is Adhiraj i am 8 and i have seen a vidio of a cannel called peek a boo dr. binocs and it has a diferent story so it wen like this so there was a vilage in germany an there was a very stong storm a lot of trees fell down and then the vilagers invesegated and found a roky material that is called grapite and then they came up with grapite stiks and they found out that it is verry mesy to write with and used clot to cover it and later there was an italian coppl that came up wit using wood and a french officer made the modern pencils we see today