Sixty-six years ago, an economist named Lawrence Read published a tidy little essay about all of the different companies from around the world that contributed the materials to make a simple common pencil. Written to show the folly of a centrally planned economy and how a free market is the most efficient method of production, Read’s very short story called I, Pencil is just as readable and enjoyable today as it was when it was written. You can read it here for free.
Read’s little essay is wonderful—despite its failing to include any mention of the history of the pencil (And as we all know, history is the tail that wags the dog of all knowledge…Or something like that).
It will surprise no one that the history of pencils—and damn near everything else—starts with the Romans, who used a stylus to carve letters into wet clay or wax tablets. Historians are still arguing whether they also used silverpoint or leadpoint techniques—in which a soft metal is used to leave soft marks on papyrus. (No, the stylus the Sumerians used to create cuneiform is not a precursor to the pencil because it wasn't used to draw or write, since it pressed a shape into the clay, it is the precursor to the rubber stamp.)
Paper did not become widely available in Europe until the 11th century and the only methods of writing or drawing employed either charcoal or ink. By the Renaissance, artists could use charcoal sticks, which were an improvement over lumps of charcoal, but the pencil as we know it still did not exist.
In 1565, a large deposit of fine solid graphite was discovered in the British hamlet of Seathwaite. The properties of graphite were already known, but the mines in the Cumbria region of England produced solid graphite that could be sawn into solid sticks suitable for drawing. The resulting sticks were brittle, so the graphite was wrapped in either string or long strips of sheepskin. To this day, no other source of natural graphite that is pure enough to use for writing—but hard enough to be sawn into usable sticks—has been located.
At this point, pencils were almost lost to the world because someone realized that graphite was soft enough to be carved and that it remained stable at very high temperatures, all while remaining slippery. Those three traits combined meant that graphite was perfectly suited to make cannonball molds. The graphite mines were quickly made a royal monopoly and to ensure that none of the precious material was smuggled out of the country, the mines were flooded when not needed for military production.
Note. There is no real “lead” in that lead. In the 16th century, alchemists believed that everything was made up from four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water. At the time, graphite was believed to be a form of lead ore. Half a millennium later, the mistake is still with us. In most European languages, the word for pencil translates to “lead pen”. Consider the irony that slippery graphite is composed of the same element as practically indestructible diamonds: pure carbon.
A century later, Germany began making a usable (but somewhat inferior) pencil, using powdered graphite treated with antimony and sulfur. When the mixture was allowed to dry out, it formed a usable graphite stick that could be encased in wood. While the higher quality British pencil was preferable, the German pencils were a practical compromise.
Which brings us (as faithful readers have probably already guessed) to Napoleon. Great Britain went to war with France in 1793, establishing a naval blockade of French ports. At the same time, English merchants were forbidden to trade with France. French artists and writers were used to pencils and were loath to return to the days of using charcoal, and, unfortunately, France was also at war with Germany. (Well, more accurately, France was at war with the German-speaking States within the Holy Roman Empire, but let’s not quibble.)
France needed an alternative, not only for convenience, but by this point, using a pencil was a military necessity. Military officers routinely drew maps, scribbled written orders, and had to solve the complicated math problems required for accurately firing artillery. Napoleon urged the French government, technically the National Convention, to find a solution. The Convention asked Nicolas-Jacques Conté, a scientist and French army officer, to find a solution to the problem. Conté worked on the process for several days and came up with a brilliant solution: By mixing powdered graphite with a fine clay, the mixture could be extruded into whatever shape was desired and then baked in a kiln. By varying both the proportion of graphite in the mixture and the baking time, pencil leads of varying hardness could be made, producing not only cheaper and more practical pencils, but production of pencils in a variety of diameters and hardnesses heralded the invention of the art pencil. (A few years later, in his spare time, Conté also invented the colored crayon.)
The new French-style pencil was easy to produce and was quickly copied all over the world. Within a few years, inventors had substituted colored pigments for the graphite, added wax as a binder and were producing colored pencils. The new pencil industry quickly put the hard graphite mines of England out of business, though if you go to Cumbria, where the mines were located, you can see the world’s largest pencil at the Derwent Pencil Museum.
I guess that’s enough history lecturing for now. I could tell you why England banned the use of the mechanical pencil sharpener during World War II, but I think I’ll save that story for another day.
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