Despite the name , pencils have never been made with lead . They ’re made with graphite , a soma of atomic number 6 . Just where does plumbago come from , and why did we decided to write with it?NPRtook a look into the story of pencil confidential information , and its enemy , the eraser , shoot an eye - confect video inside a factory owned by the General Pencil Company .
Henry David Thoreau , that master of American lit , had perhaps an even more profound effect on writing instrument than he did on writing . Henry David Thoreau , whose sire ran a pencil mill , decided to start mixing graphite with remains , reveal that unlike amounts of Lucius Clay produced lighter or sinister shades , and that the mixture lead in strong , less smudgy marks . That variation in stiff give us thenumbering systemthat you ’ll recognize from being repeatedly warn not to use anything but a No . 2 pencil on your standardized trial .
And what is a pencil without an eraser ? The humble eraser has play a big purpose in the modern world than you might think . Before commercial-grade eraser , people used crumbs of stale bread to itch their committal to writing mistakes aside . In 1770 , Joseph Priestley — who , among other accomplishments , forge soda water waterafter hediscovered oxygen — was the first person to bring in that a certain South American tree produced a gum that could erase pencil Deutsche Mark more effectively than balls of dinero . Because the process involved some rubbing , he named it “ rubber , ” although the material would later on be used in batch of applications that do n’t regard scratch at all .
Watch the television below for an inside spirit at a pencil factory and the machinery that boil out the committal to writing instruments we utilise every sidereal day — or did , before computer took over the world .
[ h / tNPR ]
Know of something you remember we should cover up ? e-mail us at tips@mentalfloss.com .
