Pills and Pencils

Pills go back thousands of years. They were often squished up bits of plant matter. During the early 1800s, attempts to produce pills with specific chemicals had many problems. Coatings would often fail to dissolve, and the moisture required in pill production could often deactivate ingredients.

In 1843, English artist William Brockedon was facing similar problems with graphite pencils. To get around this, he invented a machine which was able to press graphite powder into a solid lump and produce high-quality drawing tools.

A drug manufacturer saw that the device had potential for other uses, and Brockedon’s invention was soon being used to create the very first powder-based tablets. This technology was adapted to mass manufacturing for medicines. Since then there have been many other ways of produce pills, but the original is still in use.

Why Number 2 pencils

Pencil makers manufacture No. 1, 2, 2½, 3, and 4 pencils, and sometimes other intermediate numbers. The higher the number, the harder the lead and lighter the markings. Number 1 pencils produce darker markings, which are sometimes preferred by people working in publishing.

The current style of production is profiled after pencils developed in 1794 by Nicolas-Jacques Conté. Before Conté, pencil hardness varied from location to location and maker to maker. Earliest pencils were made by filling a wood shaft with raw graphite.

Conté’s method involved mixing powdered graphite with finely ground clay, shaped into a long cylinder and then baked in an oven. The proportion of clay versus graphite added to a mixture determines the hardness of the lead. Although the method is usually the same, the way companies categorize and label pencils isn't.

Today, many U.S. companies use a numbering system for general-purpose, writing pencils that specifies how hard the lead is. For graphic and artist pencils and for companies outside the U.S., systems use a combination of numbers and letters known as the HB Graphite Scale.

Testing centers prefer Number 2 pencils, because their machines use the electrical conductivity of the lead to read the pencil marks. Early scanning-and-scoring machines couldn't detect marks made by harder pencils, so No. 3 and No. 4 pencils usually resulted in erroneous results and softer pencils like No. 1 smudge. Because of this and general wide acceptance, No. 2 pencils became the industry standard.

Pencils and Erasers

In 1858, there were lead pencils and there were erasers. That year, Hymen Lipman received his patent for putting the two together. A few years later, in 1862 Lipman sold his patent to Joseph Reckendorfer for $100,000. that was quite a fortune at the time.

Reckendorfer sued the pencil company Faber for infringement. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Reckendorfer declaring the patent invalid, because his invention was actually a combination of two already known things with no new use. Faber is still in business making pencils and crayons.

The word "pencil" derives from the Latin word "pencillus", meaning tail or little brush. A typical pencil can draw a line 35 miles long, or write about 45,000 words. You cannot get lead poising from pencils, because they do not contain lead. More than half of all pencils are made in China. The typical six sided pencil uses less wood to make than round, is easier to sharpen, and has better grip to not roll off of a surface. There is no reason for the yellow color and many countries do not paint their pencils yellow.