It’s back to school shopping season, which means that school supplies are flying off of store shelves. One of my favorite school supplies is pencils - they’re so easy and fun to work with. Check out these fun facts about this classic school supply!
#1: Yellow pencils are inspired by Chinese royalty
In the late 1800s, the best graphite in the world was produced in China. Western pencil makers wanted to call attention to the top-quality lead in their pencils, so they painted them yellow, the color associated with Chinese royalty. Fancy!
#2: Chunks of bread were once used as erasers
Before rubber erasers were invented, writers often rubbed small hunks of stale bread over pencil marks they wanted to erase! The first rubber eraser was allegedly used when a writer accidentally picked up a dried piece of sap from the Para tree instead of his breadcrumbs. The sap rubbed things off even more effectively than bread, so people started calling it “rubber”! Today, many erasers are made of synthetic rubber (which is a type of plastic), but some are still made of sap from the Para tree.
#3: You can’t find #2 pencils outside the United States
Famous author Henry David Thoreau once worked in his father’s pencil factory, where he introduced a new system for measuring the hardness of pencil lead. Instead of using letters as in the non-U.S. standard, Henry rated his pencils with numbers #1-#4. This created the #2 pencils that are required for many standardized tests in America today. But #2 pencils are only available in the United States - pencils with that thickness are known as HB pencils everywhere else!
#4: There is no lead in pencil lead
Pencil cores are a mix of graphite and clay, fired in a kiln at more than 1,500º Fahrenheit. So why do we call the middle of pencils “lead”? Legend has it that in 1564, shepherds from Borrowdale, England were looking for their lost sheep in the midst of a storm. The story claims that they stumbled upon an enormous deposit of pure graphite! Inspectors may have mistakenly identified the shepherds’ find as rare “plumbago” (Latin for “lead ore”), which would explain the huge mining industry explosion soon after. “Plumbago” became so popular that miners once drank it with ale and wine as a cure-all for various “ale-ments”. Don’t try that at home - pencil lead is definitely not safe to ingest!
#5: Stealing a pencil could’ve put you in prison for 7 years
When it was first discovered, the price of English graphite was set at around £100 (about $40,000 USD today) per ton. But after engineers discovered it could be used to coat cannonballs, the price skyrocketed to £5,000 (about $93,000 today) per ton by 1830! Armed guards were constantly stationed outside graphite mines, and workers were forced to undress before heading home to prove they weren’t hiding any valuable graphite flakes in their clothes. A graphite black market emerged, and conmen called stümplers made fortunes selling fake pencils that didn’t have any lead. At one point, Parliament passed an act to make lead thievery a crime punishable by seven years in a penal colony!
#6: Napoleon’s pencil shortage “lead” to today’s pencil-making process
When France was at war with other European countries in the 1790s, the whole country lost access to England’s graphite source. In 1795, France’s pencil supply was running low, so Napoleon Bonaparte asked Nicolas-Jacques Conte, an officer, inventor, artist, and balloonist, to create an alternative for pure English graphite. About a week later, Nicolas-Jacques came up with a combination of French graphite powder and clay. He melted the two materials together in a new kiln system he designed, which we still use today!
#7: Pencils have a much longer life than you think
A single pencil is said to hold enough graphite to draw a line that’s 35 miles long or write 45,000 words. But that estimate might be on the short side. In 2007, a group of volunteers used just one pencil to write out the entire manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is 100,388 words long!
#8: Using a pencil sharpener used to be against the law
During World War II, pencil sharpeners were banned in Great Britain because the waste of wood and graphite was considered excessive. Unless you wanted to get fined or arrested, you had to sharpen your blunt pencils with a knife!
Throughout history, pencils have been admired, reused, and reinvented. Today, pencils are used as plant stakes, cat toys, drum sticks, and more! What will be your pencil’s next adventure? 👓