Easy, cheap and always ready for use day and night, in the heat and severe frosts. Easily placed in a pocket or behind your ear. Without complications it can be erased by an eraser. With its help children derive their first scribbles as well as outstanding craftsmen create immortal masterpieces. This is, of course, a simple pencil - the most accessible and most famous in the world recording tool that even at the beginning of the XXI century does not give up its position. Familiar and easy for each of us, but what a difficult path he had to overcome in order to achieve this simplicity, reliability and perfection!
... Since XIV century for the drawing there were used the so-called "silver pencils" - sticks made from a mixture of lead and zinc, dark gray trace of when oxidized, become brown. It was impossible to erase the wrong trace of it using crumb or a pumice stone. That had to learn to draw accurately and correctly, as it was done with such outstanding artists as German Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Italian Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and others.
A charcoal was also used for drawing. Willow sticks were rasped, sharpened at both ends and placed in a pot. A cover was tightly plastered with clay and put on a night in smoky stove. But charcoal on paper rested precariously. Different attempts were made to overcome this deficiency! Paper coated beforehand with an aqueous solution of glue, dried, and after the sheets have been charged or painted - held over steam. As a result, the adhesive layer was watered and countersigned coal, after which the dried leaf or drawing were well secured.
The amazing history of the pencil in its usual form began in the XVI century in Borrowdale, a beautiful valley in the north of the Lake District of England. There have been discovered deposits of an unknown black substance similar to coal, but not combustible. On different surfaces, it leaves a black trace with a metallic luster, which easily could be erased. This mineral became known as "plumbago" (Lat. "like the lead"). In order not to avoid besmirching, pieces of this material were wrapped into the parchment. No one knows who first decided to put this mineral in a wooden frame (for the first time on a wooden pencil graphite rod is mentioned in the treatise on minerals Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516-1565)), but early in the second half of the XVI century, this unpretentious pencil became known in other European countries.
In 1779, Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele made an unexpected discovery: a mineral called "plumbago" was not the lead, but a modification of carbon. Ten years later German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner called this substance graphite (from the Greek. Graf - "write").
For many years English graphite suppliers - "black chalk" - held a monopoly on the manufacture of pencils, because their mineral was clean enough and do not need treatment. Graphite, extracted in other European countries, was of poor quality. Most explored deposits were quickly exhausted. This is what happened in Italy, Germany and Spain. Therefore, manufacturers have begun an intensive search for improving the properties of graphite. French scientist Nicolas-Jacques Conté in 1792 mixed graphite with clay and by firing produced from this material rods. By varying the proportions of the mixture, it was possible to achieve different shades of black. For the same colored pencils in pencil started adding different dyes and pigments. At the same time in France it was invented "Paris pencil" - from white clay and black soot. He left a very dark, almost black trace, and was soft - almost does not scratch the paper. At the same time the French invented colored chalks- Pastels: to conventional chalk there were added fats and pigments, and then rolled on a marble slab and dried.
More perfect mixture for making pencil rods was invented by Czech owner of the factory for the manufacture of laboratory glassware Joseph Hartmut. Considering one of the cups, crucibles, made from a mixture of clay and graphite, he accidentally dropped it on the table, and became interested in the fact that the fragment was leaving on the paper crisp black mark. So there were appeared the famous writing rods "KOH-I-NOOR", the name of which is inspired by the wide yellow diamond, came up with one of his sons - Franz Hartmut. He proposed the famous yellow color of pencils "KOH-I-NOOR", the first of which was made in 1790.
In the XIX-th century graphite deposits have been found in Siberia, Germany and other parts of the world. In Germany and then in the United States there were began to open the pencil factories. Mechanization and mass production allowed to reduce the price of pencils, and in the beginning of XX century, they can be used even by schoolchildren.
How pencils are made? A mixture of water, clay and fine graphite particles passed through a narrow metal tube and comes out of it in the form of a long thin straws. After drying, cutting and firing lead immersed in the hot oil and wax. Wood - usually cedar, because it is easier to sharpen - made rails thick half of the pencil, then they are treated and they cut grooves. In one place the pencil groove, and then the two halves are glued and pressed. When the glue dries, the resulting rod is cut into individual pencils, which are given a specific shape. After polishing, coloring and markings indicating the manufacturer, the degree of hardness of the lead, and other information, is now "seamless" pencil ready. Sometimes an erasing gum (eraser) is attached to one end, which was patented in 1858 by Jaime Limpen from Philadelphia.
Billions of pencils wide variety of designs and shapes are produced annually. Pencils have become a versatile tool for drawing and writing. Ordinary pencil can draw a line length of 50 kilometers or write an average of nearly 50,000 words!
It is clear that such a necessary thing in everyday life, as a traditional "wooden" pencil is constantly improved.
... Seeing that round pencils round often roll off the table, the usual hexagonal pencil at the end of XIX-th century was suggested by Count Lothar von Faberkastl. And in 1869 an American Alonzo Townsend Cross invented a mechanical clutch pencil in which the rod is held by metal clips (collet).
In XX century it was produced the so-called "chemical" pencil, after the tongue of the overzealous remained became dark blue.
Also, many of the older and middle generations enjoyed to use two-tone red and blue pencils - or bilateral, or longitudinal placement of two pencil. Probably few of us know exactly why this combination of colors is quite limited convenient pencil (as it is now called, "two in one"). And everything is very simple: these pencils is primarily used when working with military maps. After all, for the application of the symbols inherent in his troops and enemy troops were needed these colors.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the majority of domestic stationery stores were decorated with half-meter pencils, causing admiration of children. But they will look Lilliputians near the world's longest pencil manufactured by the British company Cumberland Pencil, because its length is 7 m 91 cm and weighs up to 446 lbs!
Interestingly, even in the third millennium the pencil is provided with more and more quality. For example, to replace the hexagonal pencil trihedral offered on one of the faces of which applied the measuring scale, provides a traditional recording device with the measuring line!
To choose the right pen, you must know the special symbols denoting the degree of hardness.
Different countries use different classifications. At home pencil notations are as follows.
- letters "HB" means "standard", "hard-soft".
- The letter "B" means "soft." The numbers next to the letters, for example «2B» or «6B», represent the degree of softness. The higher the number, the softer the lead. In this case, soft slate leave a darker mark.
- The letter "N" means "solid." The higher the number, such as "2H", "4H", "6H", the harder the lead.
- The letter «F» is the optimal degree of hardness (between the "HB" and "H").
- In Ukraine, Russia and most of the former Soviet Union used the letter "T" (hard), "M" (soft) and "TM" (hard-soft). Figures before the letters mean degree of hardness. It is interesting that already in 1846 it was launched production of pencil hardness of 17 different levels!
... Universal, simple and reliable pencil - unpretentious worker - not outdated and to this day, and one can hope that it will help us in everyday life for a long time.