Who Invented the Parachute? Imagine entering the airspace at a height of 5 kilometers and then landing calmly, as if you jumped down from a three-meter fence. You could do it - with a parachute! With its help, a person can go down in the air

Pencil Pencil (crayon, pencil, Bleistift). The first use of k. belongs to the last period of classical antiquity, but, apparently, the preparation of such k. was then forgotten. In the 11th century, lead sticks began to be used instead of k. The first description of K. from graphite,

Writing tools have been known since ancient times, just at the time when people had a need to draw up documents, correspond or simply record their thoughts.

The creators of the progenitor of the fountain pen can be considered the ancient Egyptians - in the burial of the pharaoh Tutankhamen, a pointed copper tube was found, which was filled with a dark liquid - ink. They slowly flowed down the fibers of the stem and accumulated at the pointed end of the tube. In the process of writing with pressure, a clear thin line remained on the papyrus.

The Romans used the pewter stylus to draw on scrolls of papyrus and parchment, and to write on wax tablets.

Beginning in the 13th century, artists used thin silver wire for drawing, which they soldered to a pen or kept in a case. This type of pencil was called a "silver pencil". This instrument required a high level of skill, since it is impossible to erase what was written with it. Its other characteristic feature was that over time, the gray strokes applied with a silver pencil turned brown. Such tools were used by such masters of graphics as Dürer, Van Eyck and Botticelli.

The history of the pencil begins in the 14th century. The so-called "Italian pencil", which appeared at this time, is known. It was a core of clay black shale.

Then they began to make it from burnt bone powder, fastened with vegetable glue. This tool allowed you to create an intense and rich line. Interestingly, artists still sometimes use silver, lead and Italian pencils when they need to achieve a certain effect.

Charcoal continued to be used, as in ancient times, but no longer in the form of firebrands, but, for example, by specially processing willow sticks in a pot sealed with clay in a furnace.

The appearance of the word "pencil" is most likely connected with the prototypes. It goes back to the Turkic karadas - "black stone" and the Turkish karatas - "black slate". Linguists also associate the word pencil with it - a baby, a little one, a little person, indicating the proximity of its meaning to the German word "stift" - a pencil little one.

Graphite pencils have been known since the 16th century. English shepherds from the Cumberland area discovered a dark mass in the ground, which they used to mark sheep. Initially, due to the color similar to lead, the deposit was mistaken for deposits of this mineral used for casting bullets. But, having determined the unsuitability of the new material for these purposes, they began to make thin sticks pointed at the end from it and used them for drawing. Such sticks were soft, dirty hands and suitable for drawing, but not for writing.

In the 17th century, graphite was usually sold on the streets. Customers, mostly artists, would clamp these graphite sticks between pieces of wood or twigs, wrap them in paper, or tie them with twine.

The so-called "Parisian pencil" ("sauce") was made from a mixture of white clay and black soot. It turned out to be good because it gives a black mark on paper and scratches it less. They are still painted by graphic artists. In France, in the 15th century, pastel was invented by adding pigments and fats to chalk. They used gum arabic or fig tree juice, for example. Leonardo da Vinci is credited with the discovery of sanguine - "red chalk". It is natural kaolin, colored by iron oxides.

The first document that mentions a wooden pencil is dated 1683. In Germany, the production of graphite pencils began in Nuremberg. The Germans guessed to mix graphite powder with sulfur and glue, thus obtaining a rod of not the highest quality, but at a lower price. To hide this, pencil manufacturers resorted to various tricks. Pieces of pure graphite were inserted into the wooden case of the pencil at the beginning and at the end, while in the middle there was a low-quality artificial core. Sometimes the inside of the pencil was completely empty. It is clear that the so-called "Nuremberg Goods" did not enjoy a good reputation.

The modern pencil was invented in 1794 by the talented French scientist and inventor Nicolas Jacques Conte. At the end of the 18th century, the English Parliament imposed a strict ban on the export of precious graphite from Cumberland. Violation of this decree was punished very severely, up to the death penalty. But, despite this, graphite continued to be smuggled into continental Europe, which led to a sharp increase in its price.

On the instructions of the French convention, Conte developed a recipe for mixing graphite with clay and producing high-quality rods from these materials. With the help of processing at elevated temperatures, high strength was achieved, but even more important was the fact that changing the proportion of the mixture made it possible to make rods of different hardness, which served as the basis for the modern classification of pencils by hardness (T, M, TM or in the English version: H - hard, B - soft, HB - medium hard). The numbers in front of the letters indicate the further degree of softness or hardness. It depends on the percentage of graphite in the mixture, which also affects the color of the lead (lead) - the more graphite, the darker and softer the pencil lead.

At the end of the 18th century, the Czech manufacturer J. Hartmut, who produced laboratory glassware, combined clay and graphite, initiating the pencil production of the famous KOH-I-NOOR.

Polymers are used in modern leads, which allow achieving the desired combination of strength and elasticity, making it possible to produce very thin leads for mechanical pencils (up to 0.3 mm).

The familiar hexagonal shape of the pencil case was proposed at the end of the 19th century by Count Lothar von Fabercastle (Faber-Castell), noting that round pencils often roll off inclined writing surfaces.

In Russia, rich in graphite and timber, Mikhail Lomonosov, with the help of the inhabitants of one village in the Arkhangelsk province, launched the production of a pencil in a wooden shell and introduced the concept of “gross” into world use - a dozen dozen. Gross - the daily rate of production of pencils by one master with one apprentice. Until now, all over the world - "gross" is a unit of measurement for the number of pencils.

With the mandrel of a graphite rod in a wooden shell, the appearance and principle of operation of a pencil has not changed for more than two hundred years. Production improves, quality improves, the number of pencils produced becomes astronomical, but the idea of ​​rubbing a layered coloring substance against a rough surface remains remarkably viable.

The invention of a pencil in a wooden frame, due to ease of use, as well as the relative simplicity and cheapness of their manufacture, facilitated the process of fixing and disseminating information. To appreciate the advantages of this innovation, it is necessary to remember that for many centuries writing was associated with such attributes as goose and, later, metal pens, ink or ink. The person writing was chained to the table. The appearance of the pencil made it possible to take notes on the road or in the process of work, when it was necessary to instantly fix something. No wonder our language has firmly entered the phraseological turn: "take it on a pencil."

2/3 of the material that makes up a simple pencil goes to waste when it is sharpened. This prompted the American Alonso Townsend Cross (Cross), a pioneer of modern writing instruments, to create a metal pencil in 1869. The graphite rod was placed in a metal tube and could, if necessary, be extended to the appropriate length.

This humble beginning influenced the development of a whole group of products that are used everywhere today. The simplest design is a mechanical pencil with a 2mm lead, where the rod is held by metal clamps (collets) - a collet pencil. The collets open when a button on the end of the pencil is pressed, resulting in extension to a length adjustable by the owner of the pencil.

On September 15, 1912, 19-year-old Tokuji Hayakawa opened a small metal haberdashery workshop in central Tokyo. Then he managed to invent an eternally sharp pencil. Thus began the career of the founder of Sharp Corporation, one of the leading electronic companies.

It would seem that reinventing the pencil is like reinventing the wheel. But Hayakawa managed to make something completely new out of this simple and familiar object. He came up with an original mechanism that made it possible to keep the pencil point in working condition all the time, and placed it in a metal case. The stylus was pushed out due to the rotation of the case. "Hayakawa's mechanical pencil" - under this name he patented the invention - was devoid of the shortcomings of its predecessor, which was made of celluloid and was terribly uncomfortable, ugly and impractical.

In 1915, Hayakawa put his pencils on the market. They dispersed poorly: the metal case was cold to the fingers and did not look good with a kimono. Hayakawa persisted in working for the warehouse until he received a large order from a trading company in the port city of Yokohama. It turned out that in Europe and the United States, "Hayakawa's pencil" gained popularity. Large Japanese traders quickly assessed the export potential of the new product and began to buy pencils directly from the factory. She was loaded to the limit, and the merchants demanded more and more. Then, for the production of pencils, Hayakawa created another company, while he himself continued to work on their design. In 1916, he developed the head for the lead, and the mechanical pencil took on the form that it retains to this day. The product received a new name - "eternally sharp pencil", Ever-Ready-Sharp Pencil. This is where the name Sharp Corporation comes from.

It is worth once again returning to the mention of the company N.-J. Conte. At the end of the 20th century, it launched the Conte Evolution, a wood-free pencil that can be made on a single production line in just one minute or less. The recipe is secret. It is only known that it is prepared on the basis of synthetic rubber, the solution of which is drawn out in the form of spaghetti, cut into sections, sharpened at one end, cut off at the other (to which an eraser can be added) and covered with paint.

Modern mechanical pencils are more advanced. Each time the button is pressed, a small section of the lead is automatically fed. Such pencils do not need to be sharpened, they are equipped with a built-in (usually under the lead feed button) eraser and have various fixed line thicknesses (0.3mm, 0.5mm, 0.7mm, 0.9mm, 1mm).

Statistics lovers have calculated that with one ordinary wooden pencil you can draw a line 56 km long or write more than 40 thousand words. But Steinbeck, they say, could write up to 60 pencils in one day. And Hemingway also wrote only with wooden pencils.

There is another curious fact of modern advantages, it would seem, of such a simple tool as a pencil. The US Space Agency (NASA) has been developing a fountain pen for writing in space for more than a year (under a $3.5 million project), and Soviet cosmonauts used trouble-free pencils.

Drawing is a fun and rewarding activity for all ages. And one of the most any artistic materials of any child is pencils. But few of us know how pencils are made, what kind of wood is used for this purpose. It is noteworthy that the creation of these stationery is carried out in each factory in its own way. The editors of the site conducted their investigation and will tell the story of the appearance of the pencil and the technology of its manufacture.

History of the pencil began about 300 years ago, when a new mineral, graphite, was used instead of lead. But it is very soft, and therefore clay was added to the graphite mass. From this, the graphite rod became harder and stronger. The more clay, the harder the pencil. Therefore, there are different types of pencils: hard, medium and soft.

But graphite also gets very dirty, so he got "clothes". She became wooden. It turns out that not every tree is suitable for making a pencil body. You need a tree that is easy to plan and cut, but it should not shaggy. Siberian cedar turned out to be ideal for this purpose.

Fat and glue are also mixed into the graphite mass. This is to make the graphite slide over the paper more easily and leave a saturated mark. So, about two hundred years ago, the pencil became similar to what we are used to seeing.

How pencils were made

Pencils were then made by hand. A mixture of graphite, clay, fat, soot and glue diluted with water was poured into a hole in a wooden stick and evaporated in a special way. One pencil was made in about five days, and it was very expensive. In Russia, the production of a pencil was organized by Mikhail Lomonosov in the Arkhangelsk province.

The pencil has been constantly improved. A round pencil rolls off the table, so they came up with a hexagonal pencil. Then, for convenience, an eraser was placed at the top of the pencil. Colored pencils appeared, in which instead of graphite, chalk with a special glue (kaolin) and a dye is used in the leads.

People continued to look for material to replace wood. So there were pencils in a plastic frame. A mechanical pencil in a metal case was invented. Now wax pencils are also produced.

From the beginning of creation to the finished product, a pencil goes through 83 technological operations, 107 types of raw materials and materials are used in its manufacture, and the production cycle is 11 days.

What wood are pencils made from today?

In most cases, they are made from alder and linden, of which there are a huge number on the territory of Russia. Alder is not the most durable material, but it has a uniform structure, which simplifies the processing process and preserves the natural natural color. As for linden, it meets all operational requirements, and therefore is used in the production of both cheap and expensive pencils. Due to its good viscosity, the material holds the lead firmly. A unique material for creating pencils is cedar, which is widely used in factories in Russia. It is noteworthy that not healthy wood is used, but specimens that no longer give nuts.

Stem: what is the basis

The production of pencils is carried out using a special core. Graphite lead consists of three components - graphite, soot and silt, to which organic binders are often added. Moreover, graphite, including colored graphite, is a constant component, since it is the stylus that leaves a trace on paper. The rods are created from a carefully prepared mass, which has a certain temperature and humidity. The kneaded dough is shaped by a special press, then passed through equipment with holes, which makes the mass look like noodles. These noodles are formed into cylinders from which rods are extruded. It remains only to ignite them in special crucibles. Then the rods are fired, and after it fat is performed: the formed pores are filled with fat, stearin or wax under pressure and at a certain temperature.

How are colored pencils made?

Here, again, the core, which is made from pigments, fillers, fattening components and a binder, has a fundamental difference. The production process of the rod is as follows:

The manufactured rods are placed in special grooves on the plank and covered with a second plank;

Both boards are glued with PVA glue, while the rod should not stick;

The ends of the glued boards are aligned;

Preparation is performed, that is, the addition of fat to an already existing mixture.

It is noteworthy that the production of pencils is carried out taking into account the consumer properties of products. So, cheap pencils are made from wood of not the highest quality, exactly the same - not the highest quality - and the shell. But the pencils that are used for artistic purposes are made from high-quality wood, which has a double sizing. Depending on what the pencil is made of, its sharpening will also be performed. It is believed that neat chips are obtained if the products are made of pine, linden or cedar wood. In addition, it is important that the lead is glued with high quality - such a pencil will not break even if it falls.

What should be the shell?

The simplicity and beauty of the pencil depends on the shell. Since pencils are made of wood, it must meet the following requirements: softness, strength and lightness.

During operation, the shell should

Do not break or crumble, like the whole body;

Do not exfoliate under the influence of natural factors;

Have a beautiful cut - smooth and shiny;

Be resistant to moisture.

What equipment is used?

The production of pencils is carried out using a variety of equipment. For example, the purification of clay, from which a graphite rod will subsequently be created, requires special mills and crushers. Processing of the mixed dough is carried out on a screw press, where the rod itself is formed from the dough by rollers with three different gaps. For the same purpose, a die with holes is used. Drying of wooden blanks is carried out in drying cabinets, where the products are subjected to rotation for 16 hours. With good drying, the wood acquires a moisture level of a maximum of 0.5%. As for colored pencils, they are not subjected to heat treatment due to the presence of fillers, dyes and fattening components in them. On a special machine, pencils are trimmed in length.

How pencils are made

Drying plays an important role in the production process. . It is carried out in special wells using machines, and the planks are stacked so that drying is as efficient as possible. In these wells, drying is carried out for about 72 hours, then the boards are sorted: all cracked or ugly products are rejected. The selected blanks are ennobled with paraffin, calibrated, that is, special grooves are cut on them, where the rods will be located.

Now a milling line is used, on which the blocks are divided into pencils. Depending on the shape of the knives used at this stage, the pencils are either round, or faceted, or oval. An important role is played by the fastening of the stylus in a wooden case: this must be done firmly and reliably, which reduces the risk of the elements of the stylus falling out. The elastic adhesive used for bonding makes the lead stronger.

Modern pencils and colored pencils come in a huge variety of designs and colors. Since pencils are made in the factory, they pay close attention to each stage of production.

Coloring is one of the important stages, since it must meet a number of requirements. Extrusion is used to finish the surface, and the end face is finished by dipping. In the first case, the pencil passes through the primer, where at the end of the conveyor it is turned over to apply the next layer. Thus, a uniform coating is obtained.

There are two large pencil factories in Russia. Pencil factory them. Krasina in Moscow― the first state enterprise in Russia for the production of pencils in a wood shell. The factory was founded in 1926. For more than 72 years, it has been the largest manufacturer of stationery.

Siberian pencil factory in Tomsk. In 1912, the tsarist government organized a factory in Tomsk, which sawed cedar board for the production of all pencils produced in Russia. In 2003, the factory significantly increased its range of products and introduced new brands of pencils known for their quality to the market. "Siberian cedar" and "Russian pencil» with good consumer characteristics. Pencils of new brands have taken a worthy place among inexpensive domestic-made pencils made from Russian environmentally friendly materials.

In 2004 the pencil factory was sold to a Czech company KOH-I-NOOR. Investments came to the factory, and new opportunities appeared for distributing products not only in the domestic, but also in the global stationery market.

If you write spurs with a pencil on hundred-ruble bills, then an attempt to take the spur away from a student will take on the appearance of extortion!

Students joke

The world around us is so complex that sometimes we forget about the simple things that surround us and do not even think about their history, how they function and how they were invented. Today's guest of our article is a pencil. Who invented the pencil? How was the pencil invented? What year was the pencil invented? Do you know the answers to these questions? If not, now you will know everything.

The history of the invention of the pencil goes deep into antiquity. We can observe the first prototype of a pencil in Ancient Rome, it was a stylus (not the one you poke on the phone screen 😀). Scribes used this thin metal rod to make various marks on papyrus. The styluses themselves were made of lead, or wood or other metal. If the material was not writing, then the necessary marks were simply scratched with the stylus. The stylus survived until the early Middle Ages, and later was even used in Rus', where they scratched inscriptions on ceres (wax tablets) or birch bark. The lead stylus left a fairly soft mark on parchment, the color of the mark was light gray and not very contrasting, so sometimes they resorted to coal or black shale, but it was inconvenient to use such stationery tools. The traces of the lead stylus were erased with the help of a crumb of bread.

In 1564, a large deposit of graphite was discovered in England in the Borrowdale Valley. Thanks to this event, graphite spread throughout England. People highly appreciated its properties when they saw that the mineral leaves a much darker and clearer mark than lead. It was due to the similarity to lead that the first name of graphite was plumbargo (Latin for “like lead”) or “black lead”. At first, local shepherds began to take pieces of graphite and use them to mark sheep, merchants used graphite to mark their boxes, goods and baskets, and artists inserted graphite into special cases and created paintings with it. True, the new mineral turned out to be too soft and fragile, and also stained the fingers, so they began to invent holders for it. Initially, these were graphite sticks wrapped in thread, rope or braid.

A pencil in braid and rope, as well as a bread crumb!

Later, graphite began to be inserted into special hollowed-out wooden sticks, thus first pencil! After that, goose feathers immediately went out of fashion.

Who invented the first pencil is unknown. The pencil was first described in 1565 by Konrad Gesner, a Swiss encyclopedic scientist, and his invention is sometimes attributed to him, although this is unlikely. European artisans (carpenters) were the first known pencil makers.

But the history of the pencil does not end there. The first serial production of pencils is established in 1761 in Nuremberg in Germany, where the first stationery companies were founded, such as Faber-Castell, Lyra, Steadtler and others. It was they who drove the development of the pencil industry throughout the industrial revolution of the 19th century. These companies still exist today.

For almost two hundred years, the English Borrowdale valley was practically the only graphite deposit that could be used as a pencil filling in Europe, since all other sources were of extremely low quality graphite. For Great Britain, graphite became a strategic resource, with the help of which it even carried out an economic blockade of revolutionary France in 1792, banning the export of raw materials to this country. The first French Republic must have had a hard time without pencils. By the way, back in 1752, the British Parliament passed a law according to which anyone who dared to steal or sell a pencil on the black market was expected to be exiled or imprisoned. Imagine if we were now jailing people for stealing pencils in offices and exiling them to Siberia 🙂

Interestingly, in English, the word lead (lead) is now called the core of a pencil. In Russian, the word "pencil" comes from two Turkic words "kara" and "dash", which respectively means "black stone". In 1779, the Swedish chemist Karl Scheele found out that graphite is one of the varieties of crystalline carbon, and the German geologist Abraham Werner called it “graphite”, which means “write” in Greek.

In 1792, Josei Harmuth founds a pencil manufacturing company in Austria. His company was called KOH-I-NOOR. First of all, he was remembered for the fact that he learned how to make artificial graphite.

Since the French needed pencils no less than everyone else, the famous French revolutionary Lazar Carnot asks Nicolas Jacques Conte to invent something that would help get rid of the English monopoly on graphite. In 1795, Nicolas Jacques Conte, a French inventor and painter, patents a new method for making pencils.

Conte began to grind graphite from low-grade deposits, then mixed it with clay. Then the artist sculpted rods from the resulting mixture and fired them in furnaces. Thus, he received a substance that was cheaper than English graphite, while writing no worse. Conte also guessed to change the amount of graphite in this mixture in order to influence the hardness or softness of the pencil leads. Conte is also the inventor of the "Comte pencil" which is used for drawing. The Conte pencil is softer than graphite, but harder than pastels, and you can draw with it on a special rough cardboard.

According to the Conte technology, pencils are still being made. You can watch the process of making pencils in this video:

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In 1840, Lothar von Fabercastle noticed that cylindrical pens were inconvenient because they rolled off when left on a writing table, which had an inclined surface. His idea was as simple as two and two, he decided to produce hexagonal pencils. By the way, it was he who set the standards for a pencil - its length and diameter.

In 1869, Alonso Townsend Cross brought many fresh ideas to the production of pens for his father Richard Cross's company. He began to make pens and pencils in a more refined and stylish way, while being quite minimalistic and austere. For example, Alonso decided to move away from wood in a pencil and wrap graphite in metal. By pressing on the cap, the rod was extended from the metal frame to the required length. In fact, he solved one of the most acute problems of pencils, because when sharpening, up to 60% of graphite was lost.

Why does the pencil leave marks?

Have you ever wondered why a pencil leaves a mark? That is how exactly this process takes place. Let's figure it out.

The oddity of graphite is that it is a form of pure carbon, which is one of the softest solids known, and one of the best lubricants, since the six carbon atoms that bond to form a ring can easily slide over adjacent rings. For example, you can observe these rings in a picture of graphite under a microscope:

When drawing with a pencil, several important factors are combined. First, the pencil tip is quite soft. This is due to the fact that in graphite the arrangement of atoms has a strict order - in layers, and are closely connected with each other, but the layers themselves are not so strongly connected due to the large distance between each other, so the rod breaks easily. Secondly, the paper fibers, oddly enough, are actually so hard that they crumble the pencil stem like a carrot on a grater, so the particles get stuck between the fibers. A whole line of these pencil fragments just creates his mark. For the same reasons, you will not be able to write with a pencil on smooth surfaces (glass for example), since graphite fragments simply do not get stuck on it.

You may have a reasonable question, why does the eraser erase the pencil? The answer is really simple. The cellulose fibers of the paper are so strong that they even tear the rubber of the eraser, and the rubber itself has the property of stickiness, though not as strong as that of the glue, but such that fragments of graphite stick to the gum that walks between the fibers. Then the rubbed pieces of rubber, along with graphite, roll into spools, and you blow them away

Fancy pencils

This pencil was made in 2007 in New York. About 40 big pencil lovers made a pencil, whose length reached 23 meters, the diameter of its core was 25 centimeters, and the weight of the eraser was almost 90 kilograms. It took 14 days for everything!

You can watch the process of making a pencil in this video

In the same 2007, Sbastian Bernge creates a series of experimental cookware and shows it at an exhibition. Many liked the pencil spoon, the mass production of which began in 2008.

The perverted fantasy of the people at Interaction Research Studio led them to the idea that it was possible to make pencils from the ashes of people. On average, about 240 pencils can be made from one person. At the same time, the name of the deceased was written on each such pencil.

space pencil

Probably, almost everyone has heard the story about how stupid Americans spent millions of dollars to make a super-duper pen for space, and the brave Soviet cosmonauts just used a pencil. Of course, this is just a story, because a pencil in its usual form is not applicable for space, since shavings and slate fragments would fly all over the ship in zero gravity, and wood and graphite are generally extremely flammable materials, which, in the condition of a spacecraft filled with oxygen looks a bit suicidal.

In reality, the Americans used felt-tip pens, and our astronauts used wax pencils, but the story is partly true, because in 1965 Paul Fisher and his Fisher Pen Company patented "Fischer's space pen." She will write even if she is turned upside down, the ink in it does not dry out and is not subject to oxidation, while she is able to write at temperatures from -45 degrees Celsius to +200.

• Let's do a little math and find out how long a line we can draw with one typical HB pencil. The thickness of the graphite layer that remains on the paper is approximately 20 nanometers. By the way, the diameter of a carbon atom is 0.14 nanometers, so the pencil line is only 143 carbon atoms thick. The strip width is usually 1 mm. Let's calculate how much graphite will go to a strip of 1 kilometer. We multiply all three values, converting everything to millimeters, we get 0.00002 * 1 * 1000000 \u003d 20 millimeters cubed. The length of a standard pencil is 15 centimeters or 150 millimeters, and the diameter of the rod is 2 millimeters. This means that the volume of one graphite rod is obtained by the formula for the volume of a cylinder (base area per height) 150*3.14*1^2=471 mm cubed. Now we divide the volume of graphite in the rod by the volume of graphite in a kilometer and we get 23.5 kilometers. It is this length of the line that we can draw under all the conditions that we wrote above.
• One letter that you write with a pencil will weigh 0.00033 grams. Write your name and find out how much it weighs. Of course, in normal handwriting and size. For example, my name Geron will weigh 0.00165 grams.
• A pencil is used when the pen can fail, which is why they are so popular among scuba divers to make various sketches right under the water.
• The pencil is indifferent to weightlessness or extreme cold, so it is used in space (wax pencil) and at scientific stations at the North and South Poles. Brrr!
• Graphite is the softest solid in existence.
• Interestingly, if we change the atomic structure of graphite, then on the contrary we will get the hardest substance - diamond.

Today in stores you can buy both colored and simple pencils. A simple pencil writes in gray, the shade of the written will vary depending on the hardness of the graphite.

What did people draw before?

Curiously, artists had to use "silver pencils," thirteenth-century stationery that consisted of wires of silver placed in a case or frame. This prototype of a pencil did not allow erasing, and over time, the inscription turned from gray to brown.

It is noteworthy that artists today often use silver, Italian, lead pencils in order to achieve a certain effect.

Graphite-tipped pencils began to be made in the fifteenth century, when deposits of graphite were discovered in England. But they began to use this raw material only after a series of experiments that showed that the mass leaves clear marks on. And at first, sheep were marked with graphite. However, pieces of graphite stained hands, so for convenience, sticks made of material were tied with thread, wrapped in paper or clamped with branches of wood.

When was the graphite pencil invented?

The first written mention of a pencil dates back to 1683. In Germany, the production of graphite pencils in a wooden case began in 1719. Graphite was initially mixed with glue, sulfur, however, the rod was not of very high quality. That is why the reformulation of the recipe continued further. In 1790 in Vienna, Josef Hardmuth came up with the idea of ​​mixing graphite dust with water and clay, after firing this mixture, rods of various degrees of hardness were obtained. This master subsequently founded the firm Koh-i-Noor, which produces world-famous pencils to this day.

Few people know that a simple pencil can draw underwater and in space, but a ballpoint pen cannot.