The history of the pencil

we now know as graphite. When a local farmer tried to use it to mark his sheep, he quickly identified their sheep. However, others quickly realised the potential for using this intriguing substance to write on paper. When it was untreated the material was very soft, which meant that it left messy marks on the page. It took a little while for people to encase it with a thin core of the substance in stiff sheep hides or rope. At this time chemistry was still in its infancy. People searched for a word to describe this increasingly useful substance and came up with plumbago which, in Latin, means ‘act like lead’. Later the name graphite was derived from the Greek word ‘graphein’ meaning ‘to write’. We still call graphite the lead of a pencil even though it is now known that there is no trace of real lead in graphite. Graphite has a very high melting point at around 3,500 degrees Celsius. This made it invaluable to the British army and navy as a secret ingredient in the manufacture of cannon balls. The Royal Ordnance, or department of the British government responsible for the supply of weapons, used graphite as a lining inside the moulds for cannon balls, which as a result British could turn out faster and more cheaply than…