Pencils have been in use since thousands of years, the
ancient Egyptians used stylus made of lead by which they could make impressions
on ancient papyrus. But the modern pencil had a different origin, according to
the Cumberland Pencil Museum, in the mid-16th century, a violent storm knocked
over several trees in Borrowdale, England, uncovering a large deposit of a
black substance that was at first thought to be lead, local resident cut out
rods of this black substance and started to mark their sheep with it.
This strange substance was
in fact Graphite but was misidentified as lead. Also at the time Graphite was
called blacklead or plumbago, which also resembles the Latin word plumbum for
Lead.
It was almost 200 years later that Abraham Gottlob Werner, a German
scientist discovered the substance was not actually lead, but a type of carbon
instead. He later called it Graphite, which literally means “to write” in
Greek. By then Graphite was used in Pencils all over England but the name lead
just stuck.
Now another fact also remains that there used to be a number
of Lead poisoning cases and they were mainly related to pencils. Well this was
nothing to do with the pencil lead (graphite), but in fact until the middle of
the 20th century Lead was a key component used in the paint that was used to
coat the pencil, so anyone having the bad habit of chewing the pencil, ingested
lead. Lead poisoning is especially damaging to children under age six, whose
bodies are still developing.
So indeed the element lead was used in the pencil
manufacturing process, but only as an additive to the paint covering the
pencil.
Also not to
worry, as most paints manufactured currently are Lead-free. But still that’s no
excuse to chew away on that tip.
