Thursday, December 1, 2011

Kel's Fun Facts: Pencils

I had a friend in college who always wrote with an old school pencil, which I always found odd. But lately, I've been writing with a basic pencil and I quite enjoy it. Not sure why, but there you are!

In related news, it is the return of daily fun facts! I was out of town for Thanksgiving (went to New York City! Yay!) and then was just lazy getting back into fun facts, but today I was inspired, but pencils! You are excited, right?

Pencil lead is actually graphite.

The world pencil comes from Old French pincel, which means small paintbrush, which comes from the Latin word pencillus, which means little tail.

The only large scale deposit of graphite in solid form is in Cumbria, England, and was discovered sometime in the 16th century and was originally used for marking sheep.

Hymen Lipman was the first person to patent a pencil with an eraser in 1858.

Even though the "lead" in pencils is not lead, pencils used to cause lead poisoning due to the lead from the paint in the wooden part.

The #2 pencil in the US is an HB pencil in the rest of the world, which means that it is slightly harder and slightly blacker than the exact middle of the scale of pencils.

Roald Dahl used only pencils with yellow casing to write his books.

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