Pencils as Symbols of Simplicity and Perfection
Today I watched a video of the wonderful and very simple instrument, the pencil. It's evolution, which did not happen overnight, resulted in the perfecting of the iconic Dixon Ticonderago and legendary Blackwing 620.
Graphite came into widespread use following the discovery of a large graphite deposit in Borrowdale, England in 1564. Appreciated for leaving a darker mark than lead, the mineral proved so soft and brittle that it required a holder. Originally, graphite sticks were wrapped in string. Later, the graphite was inserted into hollowed-out wooden sticks and, thus, the wood-cased pencil. The wooden pencil as we know it today was invented in 1795 by Nicholas Jacques Conté in France. He discovered by crushing graphite into a powder, adding a binder of powdered clay and water, and then firing it at hire temperatures he could shape the graphite, such as the rod-like cylinders that are used for pencils today.
Pencils have been painted yellow ever since the 1890s. And that bright color isn’t just so you can find them on your desk more easily! In fact, the yellow pencil has a much deeper history than you might expect.
During the 1800s, the best graphite in the world came from China. American pencil makers wanted a special way to tell people that their pencils contained Chinese graphite.
In China, the color yellow is associated with royalty and respect. American pencil manufacturers began painting their pencils bright yellow to communicate this “regal” feeling and association with China. However, according to Henry Petroski’s history of the pencil, the European producer Koh-I-Noor was the first to introduce a yellow pencil.
The rest, as they say, is history. Today, a majority of basic hexagonal graphite writing pencils sold in the United States are painted yellow and what was once perceived as “regal” has now become “common”. For more information on this topic visit WoodChuck’s Timberlines blog post The Myth of the Yellow Pencil.
Early American pencils were made from Eastern Red Cedar, a strong, splinter-resistant wood that grew in Tennessee and other parts of the Southeastern United States. To be nearer to the source, Northern manufacturers migrated south and set up wood mills until, eventually, the greatest concentration of U.S. pencil manufacturers had established factories in Tennessee. To this day, U.S. producers are primarily concentrated in the South.
By the early 1900s, however, additional sources of wood were needed. Pencil manufacturers turned to California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, where they found Incense-cedar, a species that grew in abundance and made superior pencils. California Incense-cedar soon became the wood of choice for domestic and international pencil makers around the world.
The pencil grades "B" to "H" indicates softness and hardness, respectively. The larger the number before the letter, the greater it's softness or hardness. An HB is a medium grade. A 2B is soft as a 2H is hard, but an 4B is softer and 4H harder, etc.
(Photo: Nicholas-Jacque Conté; a Blackwing 620; a Dixon Ticonderago; the oldest known pencil in existence, dating back to the 17th c.)