Pencils – there are so many different kinds!  One weird thing about lead pencils is that they contain no lead.   Instead of lead in pencils, there is a mix of clay and graphite.
In the year 1564 a storm knocked over a huge oak tree.  After the tree fell, there was a strange black substance.  After observing the black substance people decided that it was a form of lead.  After time they discovered that this strange lead was excellent for writing and drawing.
They began digging in the area where the oak tree had fallen.  In 1779 more that two hundred years after, an English scientist found out that the substance coming from the mine was a type of carbon, not lead.  Sort of borrowing from the Greek word “graphein” meaning “to write” he dubbed the substance “graphite,” which is what it is called today.

     The first pencils were just chunks of graphite.  Later on they found out that they could shape it into sticks and they wrapped string around it so it would be much cleaner.  Then they could unwind it when got down to the string.

    One day a man named J. Pettus got a little stick of cedar.  He hollowed out the middle and stuck a piece of graphite down the hole.  He was the one who invented the wooden pencil.
For a long, long, long time all pencils were a square shape.  Then in 1876 an American guy named Josep Dixen made the round pencil.

    Now those pencils had no erasers.  The first factory that made pencils was built in 1761 in Nuremberg by a man by the name of Kasper Faber.   Right as people started using pencils, they started making mistakes and there was nothing to erase them with.  The first eraser was edible.  It was actually a piece of bread.  Not very effective,  was it, for almost two centuries?  The rubber eraser was invented by Magellan.  A man named Lipman had the great idea of putting the eraser on the pencil.  And that’s the kind of pencils we use today.
 
 

     The first invention that was marketed as a “mechanical pencil” was the 1915 “Ever-Ready Sharp Pencil,” made by Tokuji Hayakawa, and was produced at his own metal working shop which would soon grow into the Sharp Corporation.

     The first Ever Sharp pencil was called an “original lead-thrusting device,” enclosed in a small metal cylinder.

    Hey, all you pen lovers out their!  Have you ever wondered about the inside of a pen?  Well, have you?  As you know, pens use ink to work.  There are three major kinds of pens: dip pens, ball point pens, and fiber tip pens.

    Dip pens nib (the part youwrite with) is usually split into two halves that meet at the tip.  Above that is a hole in the pen (No, it is not broken.)  It is called an ink reservoir.  The reason is, it is covered with glass or plastic, except for one small hole at the top and one much smaller at the bottom.  The hole at the top is for when you dip the pen in the ink. It goes into the reservoir and goes out the small hole at the bottom so ink will always be in the pen.

    At the tip of a ball point pen there is a metal ball in a socket.  The ink in the ball point pen first runs down onto the ball and the ball rolls and some of the ink goes with it, and that is how a ball point pen works.

    Last, but not least, is the fiber tip pen.  There is a fiber-like tip to the pen.  That is how it got its name.  The ink of a fiber tip pen runs down the pen into the tip.  Then when the tip is touched to paper, it flows onto the paper.  That is what I have learned about pens.