The Long History of the Pencil

It is difficult to think of a writing tool more ordinary than the pencil. Children learn to form their first letters with one, carpenters keep one behind their ear, and artists use them to sketch ideas before committing to paint. Billions are made every year, and most are thrown away half-used without a second thought. Yet the pencil depends on a remarkable mineral, and its development involved centuries of experiment, accident and, at times, international rivalry.

The story begins in a valley in the north of England in the sixteenth century, when local people discovered a large deposit of an unusually pure, dark substance. It left a clear grey mark, did not smudge easily and could be rubbed away, which made it ideal for writing. Shepherds first used it to mark their sheep, but its value was soon recognised more widely. Because the deposit was believed to be lead, the material became known as black lead, and the name has stuck: even today, people talk about pencil lead, although modern pencils contain no lead at all.

The mineral, now called graphite, turned out to be so valuable that its extraction was strictly controlled. The mine was opened for just a few weeks each year to prevent prices from falling, and guards were posted at the entrance to stop workers from smuggling out pieces in their clothing. Graphite was also used to line the moulds in which cannonballs were made, which gave it military importance and led the government to pass laws making its theft a serious crime. For a time, England had a near monopoly on high-quality pencils.

Other countries were therefore forced to find alternatives. In the late eighteenth century, a French engineer, cut off from English supplies during a period of war, discovered that powdered graphite of lower quality could be mixed with clay and baked in a kiln. This method had two major advantages. It meant that pencils could be produced without access to pure graphite, and by changing the proportion of clay, manufacturers could make pencils that were harder or softer. The grading systems printed on pencils today, with letters such as H for hard and B for black, developed from this discovery.

The wooden casing also changed over time. Early pencils were often simply sticks of graphite wrapped in string or sheepskin. Later, makers carved a groove in a strip of wood, inserted the graphite and glued a second strip on top, a technique that is still used. Cedar became the preferred wood because it is soft enough to sharpen easily but does not splinter. In the nineteenth century, an American manufacturer added a small rubber eraser to the end, an innovation that was popular with customers but, according to the design historian Tomas Reyburn, was regarded with suspicion by some teachers, who worried that it would make pupils careless.

Modern pencil factories produce millions of pencils a day. The graphite and clay are ground together with water, pressed through a narrow opening to form thin rods and then fired at a temperature of around a thousand degrees. After cooling, the rods are dipped in wax, which helps them glide across the page. Meanwhile, slats of wood are cut, grooved and glued around the rods, and the finished blocks are sliced into individual pencils, shaped, painted and stamped with the maker's name and grade.

In the twentieth century, the pencil faced competition from fountain pens, ballpoints and, eventually, computers. Many predicted its decline, yet sales remained surprisingly steady. Reyburn suggests several reasons. A pencil works at any angle and in any temperature, which is why outdoor workers and engineers have relied on them, and it does not leak or dry out. Mistakes can be corrected, which makes it popular for crosswords, drafts and examination papers. And many people, he says, simply enjoy the feel of a pencil moving across paper.

The pencil's long survival offers a lesson for designers. Reyburn argues that the most successful everyday objects are those that are cheap, reliable and easy to understand, and that do not require the user to learn anything new. The pencil fits every one of these descriptions. In a world of constantly updated devices, there is something reassuring about a tool that has hardly changed in two hundred years.