who invented pencil?

Answer 1

mr squiggle

Answer 2

Graphite is a form of carbon, first discovered in the Seathwaite Valley on the side of the mountain Seathwaite Fell in Borrowdale, near Keswick, England, about 1564 by an unknown person. Shortly after this the first pencils were made in the same area.

Answer 3

The "lead" pencil (which contains no lead) was invented in 1564 when a huge graphite (black carbon) mine was discovered in Borrowdale, Cumbria, England. The pure graphite was sawn into sheets and then cut into square rods. The graphite rods were inserted into hand-carved wooden holders, forming pencils. They were called lead pencils by mistake - at the time, the newly-discovered graphite was called black lead or "plumbago," from the Latin word for lead ore - it looked and acted like lead, and it was not known at the time that graphite consisted of carbon and not lead. The English had a monopoly on the production of pencils since no other pure graphite mines were known and no one had yet found a way to make graphite sticks.
The Germans manufactured graphite sticks (made from powdered graphite), but they were impractical. In 1795, the Nicholas Jacques Conte (a French officer in Napoleon's army) patented the modern method of kiln-firing powdered graphite with clay to make graphite rods fro pencils. By varying the ratio of graphite to clay, the hardness of the graphite can also vary.

Before themid-1500s, "pencils" consisted of a thin rod composed of soft lead, and were used mostly by artists. The word pencil comes from the Latin word "penicillus," which means "little tail" - the name of the tiny brush that ancient Romans used as a writing instrument. Graphite (named for the Greek word meaning "to write") was chemically analyzed in 1779 (by K.W. Scheele) and named in 1789 (by A.G. Werner).

Answer 4

I remember a talk or WT many years ago about trying to reach the Truth is like a sailor tacking in the wind to reach his goal in his boat. Thousands of years have gone by for Satan to do his dirty deeds and he has done well. We JW's should spend more time in spreading the Truth we know rather than getting involved in go no-where arguments.

Answer 5

Russians used the pencil to write in SpaceShips, Rockets..etc

Answer 6

He was a really bored guy. His friends always made fun of him because he was always running to the bathroom to do "number 2",,,,hence the name NUMBER 2 pencil.......JUST KIDDING,,,I REALLY DON'T KNOW

Answer 7

i did, now bow down to my mighty invention

Answer 8

Nobody invented. it evolved.

Answer 9

I don't know,but it lead, to the pen...

Answer 10

The archetypal pencil may have been the ancient Roman stylus, which was a thin metal stick, often made of lead and used for scratching on papyrus. The word pencil comes from the Latin word penicillus which means "little tail".

Some time prior to 1565 (some sources say as early as 1500), an enormous deposit of graphite was discovered at the site of Seathwaite Fell near Borrowdale, Cumbria, England. The locals found that it was very useful for marking sheep. This particular deposit of graphite was extremely pure and solid and it could easily be sawn into sticks. This was and remains the only deposit of graphite ever found in this solid form. Chemistry was in its infancy and the substance was thought to be a form of lead. Consequently it was called plumbago (Latin for "acts like lead"). The black core of pencils is still sometimes referred to as "lead", even though it no longer contains the element lead.

The value of plumbago was soon realised to be enormous, mainly because it could be used to line the moulds for cannon balls, and the mines were taken over by the Crown and guarded. Graphite had to be smuggled out for use in pencils. Because the plumbago was soft, it required some form of case. Plumbago sticks were at first wrapped in string or in sheepskin for stability. The news of the usefulness of these early pencils spread far and wide, attracting the attentions of artists all over the "known world".

Although deposits of graphite had been found in other parts of the world, they were not of the same purity and quality as the Borrowdale find, and had to be crushed to remove the impurities, leaving only graphite powder. England continued to enjoy a monopoly on the production of pencils until a method of reconstituting the graphite powder was found. The distinctively square English pencils continued to be made with sticks cut from natural graphite into the 1860s. Today, the town of Keswick, near the original findings of block graphite, has a pencil museum. The first attempt to manufacture graphite sticks from powdered graphite was in Nuremberg, Germany in 1662. They used a mixture of graphite, sulphur and antimony. Though usable they were inferior to the English pencils.

It was the Italians who first thought of wooden holders. An Italian couple in particular named Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti were believed to be the ones to create the first blueprints for the modern carpentry pencil for the cause of being able to mark their carpentry pieces, however, their version was instead a flat oval, more compact type of pencil. They did this at first by hollowing out a stick of juniper wood. Shortly thereafter, a superior technique was discovered: two wooden halves were carved, a plumbago stick inserted, and the two halves then glued together—essentially the same method that is in use to this day.

English and German pencils were not available to the French during the Napoleonic wars. It took the efforts of an officer in Napoleon's army to change this. In 1795 Nicholas Jacques Conté discovered a method of mixing powdered graphite with clay and forming the mixture into rods which were then fired in a kiln. By varying the ratio of graphite to clay, the hardness of the graphite rod could also be varied (the more clay, the harder the pencil, and the lighter the colour of the mark). This method of manufacture remains in use today.

American colonists imported pencils from Europe until after the American Revolution. Benjamin Franklin advertised pencils for sale in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729, and George Washington used a three-inch pencil when he surveyed the Ohio Territory in 1762. It is said that William Munroe, a cabinetmaker in Concord, Massachusetts, made the first American wood pencils in 1812. If so, this was not the only pencil-making in Concord. According to Henry Petroski, transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau discovered how to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite using clay as the binder; this invention was prompted by his father's pencil factory in Concord, which employed graphite found in New Hampshire in 1821 by Charles Dunbar.

Manufacture


Today, pencils are made industrially by mixing finely ground graphite and clay powders, adding water, forming long spaghetti-like strings, and firing them in a kiln. The resulting strings are dipped in oil or molten wax which seeps into the tiny holes of the material, resulting in smoother writing. A juniper or incense-cedar plank with several long parallel grooves is cut to make something called a slat, and the graphite/clay strings are inserted into the grooves. Another grooved plank is glued on top, and the whole thing is then cut into individual pencils, which are then varnished or painted.

Many pencils, particularly those used by artists, are labelled on the European system using a "degrees" scale from "H" (for hardness) to "B" (for blackness), as well as "F" (for fine point). The standard writing pencil is "HB". However, artists' pencils can vary widely in order to provide a range of marks for different visual effects on the page. A set of art pencils ranging from a very hard, light-marking pencil to a very soft, black-marking pencil usually ranges from hardest to softest as follows:

9H 8H 7H 6H 5H 4H 3H 2H H F HB B 2B 3B 4B 5B 6B 7B 8B 9B
Hardest → Medium → Softest

The American system, using numbers only, developed simultaneously with the following approximate equivalents to the European system. It was developed by Nicolas-Jacques Conté [1].
Tone U.S. Europe
#1 = B
#2 = HB
#2 ½ * = F
#3 = H
#4 = 2H

* Also seen as 2 4/8, 2.5, 2 5/10, due to patent issues

Even though the natural deposits of pure graphite are tapped out, it is still possible to write the way Englishmen did centuries ago, without clay or wax additives leaving oily stains on paper. Chemical supply companies commonly sell 99.995% pure graphite rods in 3 mm and 6 mm diameters. The largest commonly available mechanical pencils ("lead holders") take 2 mm leads.
Source wikipedia