Story of Pencils *

In 1565, as the story goes, a large oak tree was uprooted in a storm in Cumberland and an odd black mineral was discovered clinging to its roots. This led to the digging of England's first graphite mine and the development of the pencil -- a cheap, portable, erasable writing tool.

Pencils in Europe are older than paper. The word comes from the Latin name of the type of fine-tipped writing brush, a 'penicillium'. The Greeks and Romans also sometimes used metallic lead to write or draw on papyrus, which is the origin of the modern expression "lead pencil" -- despite the fact that the modern pencil contains no lead. But technology is only embraced when it answers a society's needs, and only after a society began to write constantly and casually did the pencil become a commonplace tool. According to Henry Petrosky's history of the pencil, the first person known to use a graphite pencil was a sixteenth century Zurich writer named Konard Gesner. He mentions and even supplied an illustration of a graphite pencil in his 1565 book on fossils.

It was at about this same time that graphite was discovered in Cumberland. Soon afterwards, graphite was inserted into a wooden tube and use of the new writing implement spread. By 1600, wooden cases and sticks of graphite were being sold, separately, on the streets of London. Pencils were initially most popular with scientists, but artists and writers used them too. In 1610 one artist recommended that books be marked with a pencil and later the markings erased. ........ Others noted that the pencil was a good tool when on horseback. By the eighteenth century, artists such as J.M.W Turner always began a painting by first making a pencil sketch. ~ Page 193