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The Origin of Pencil I Bet You Don't Know
2016-11-09
In 1564,a heavy rainstorm hit England and blew down a big tree lying in Cumberland County.A mass of black substance which appears to be like coal showed its appearance on the root of the tree.It’s a graphite mineral.For the feature of black color,later the local sheepherders used such mineral to make obvious marks on the sheep.And afterwards,some smart citizens cut the graphite into strips and started to sell them on streets.And the strips were called “seal stones” by people.
But those were just the initial form of pencils.They have two obvious disadvantages.One of them is that they will get people’s fingers dirty easily,another is that they are fragile and easily broken.And some nameless talent solved the problem of stain.The solution was to pack graphite with strings.It seemed that the graphite got new clothes.And the problem of easily broken was solved by Caspar Ferber,a craftsman and amateurish chemist in Bavaria of Germany in 1761.He mixed graphite powder with sulfur,antimony and resin.This mixture was harder than pure graphite.
In 1790,when Napoleon was attacking Europe,he got this little interesting thing from England and Germany.But the countries were his enemies,he felt uncomfortable with this.So Nicholas Jakus Canth,a famous chemist and inventor of France was ordered to find French graphite to make their own pencils.After hard works,Nicholas successfully created excellent “pencils” through adding clay and adjusting the percentage.
At last,a local American cabinetmaker named William Monroe invented a kind of machine that can produce 6 to 7 inches standard laths in his own store.And after bonding the laths with graphite.The first pencil in the world got invented and quickly spread for the feature of convenience and low price.
Nowadays,pencils have various types,but we shouldn’t forget the efforts that former people had done.