![]() The eraser: Pencils and erasers now go together like peanut butter and jelly. Other pencil makers quickly followed suit. The yellow color, traditionally associated with royalty in China, was meant to portray the pencils as a luxury item. ![]() The color: Historical accounts vary, but a Czech company is credited with starting this trend at the World’s Fair in 1889, painting its pencils containing fine graphite from the Far East. But when did pencils start looking the way they do today? When it comes to today’s pencil, there are a few traits you probably associate with it. The #2 pencil: A sharper styleįrom those early days, the pencil has evolved into the familiar tool we know today. The Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner is credited as being the first person to describe putting graphite into a wooden holder. That’s why, to this day, we refer to what’s in a pencil as “lead,” even though it’s not.Įarly on, the graphite was sometimes wrapped in sheepskin or string to make it easier for the writer to hold. People weren’t quite up on chemistry in those days, so it was another couple of centuries before a chemist determined graphite was a form of carbon, not lead as they originally thought. The graphite was pure and solid, perfectly suited for writing, although the only people using it at first were shepherds marking their sheep. In the 1500s, according to common legend, a large deposit of graphite was discovered in England when a storm uprooted it along with a tree. The pencil has been around for ages, although you might not recognize its earlier cousins. ![]() Here’s a crash course on how the #2 pencil’s history has been written: The origin of the #2 pencil Without the #2 pencil, how would you have learned to write your name or to divide fractions? But how well do you know the trusty pencil? Have you ever wondered where it came from, or why #2 is often chosen over #1? There is a great deal of history behind the #2 pencil, including its origin, evolution, and current use. We owe a lot to pencils-especially those famous #2 yellows. Throughout the month of August, visit the Varsity Tutors blog for back-to-school advice, tips, and tricks for all ages. This post is part of our 2017 Back-to-School Series. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |