In the olden days, why did they lick the pencil lead before they wrote with it?

Question

Someone asked what time period I'm referring to. When I say "olden days" I'm talking about the early 1900's.

Answer 1

Graphite did not come in a standard form like it does today. (Sharpen your #2 pencil!). I think if the graphite was too hard, the moisture from the tongue softened it enough to allow the person to write with the pencil.

Answer 2

"This is a strange habit that seems to have been passed down simply via seeing old movies or watching older people do the licking business. It's a very interesting phenomenon in itself, that people still do this, without really knowing why, or when they learned the habit.

It relates to the early forms of pencils when graphite was rather expensive &/or the manufacturing process had not been fully perfected. (Early on, the English had a monopoly on the production of pencils since no other pure graphite sources were known outside Blighty at first, & industrial milling of graphite sticks had not been accomplished.) Originally soft metals - of course like lead - were used for writing implements - & they continued to be right up until the Victorian era & later. Only when more sources of graphite were established & the manufacturing process improved did the material become cheap enough to be ubiquitous in all pencils.

Cheap pencils used by the hoi-polloy in the old days were made out of inferior graphite, or other materials. Milled graphite marks easily under friction with the paper. Cheaper materials used for some early pencils did not leave much of a mark on the paper due to high density/impurity etc. Prob'ly based on shittier ratios of graphite & clay with bismuth & other crap, they were thus water soluble, & on contact with water would dissolve a bit & make a darker mark. To leave a clear mark on paper you could moisten the tip of the pencil core with saliva, creating an effect a little like ink.. I seem to recall my Grandmother explaining this to me when I was young. She grew up in the 1920s, so presumably the inferior crappy pencils were still around in the Charly Chaplin era.

(An early name for graphite was 'black lead'. This is how the term stuck with pencils.) "

Quoted from: Nostrildamus at http://monkeyfilter.com/link.php/4494

Answer 3

How "olden" are you talking when you say "olden days?" PRobably had something to do with making the "lead" softer and easier to see when writing.

Here's a similar question: How do you tell the difference between an oral and an anal thermometer?
The taste!

Answer 4

My modern day friends lick pens on occasion before using them. I have yet to figure out why...

Answer 5

It made the lead write darker. It probably made it write more smoothly as well.

Answer 6

it made the led write better, pencils no longer use led anymore though, its graphite.

Answer 7

I don't know but that sounds dangerous. I'm glad I wasn't alive then.

Answer 8

they did not have pencils