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the pencil

The pencil: no lead inside, a very long line, and a lot of mistakes

There has never been any lead in a pencil. The name comes from a 16th-century mistake.

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The real story

In the 1500s, a huge deposit of unusually pure graphite was found at Borrowdale in England's Lake District. People thought the soft, dark stuff was a kind of lead, and the name stuck. Shepherds used it to mark their sheep before anyone thought to wrap it in wood. Graphite is actually a form of carbon, the same element as diamond.

The modern pencil core was invented in 1795. France was at war and cut off from English graphite, so Nicolas-Jacques Conté mixed powdered graphite with clay and fired it in a kiln. More clay makes a harder, lighter pencil (H), and more graphite makes a softer, darker one (B). The same basic recipe is still used today.

What the narrator says

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The facts we checked

  • Pencil 'lead' is actually graphite mixed with clay — there is no lead in it
  • It is often said that one pencil can draw a line about 56 km long, or write around 45,000 words

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

Made by teodolist studio

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