Who Invented the Pencil? Detailed answer

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Who Invented the Pencil? Detailed answer

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Who Invented the Pencil?

Modern pencils are no more than 200 years old. Approximately 500 years ago, graphite was discovered in the mines of the city of Cumberland in England. It is believed that at the same time began to produce and graphite pencils.

In the German city of Nuremberg, the famous Faber family began making pencils from 1760 using graphite powder, but not entirely successfully. Finally, in 1795, a certain Comte invented pencils made from a mixture of graphite and certain types of clay and fired in a kiln. This technology is still used today.

"Simple" pencils are made of graphite, which leaves a dark mark on paper.

In the production of pencils, dry graphite powder is mixed with clay and water. The more clay, the harder the pencil, the more graphite, the softer the lead. After the mixture is formed into a paste-like paste, it is passed through a molding press, obtaining thin sticky ropes. They are straightened, cut to size, dried and sent to the kiln for firing. Wooden blanks from cedar or pine are cut in half lengthwise and a groove for the lead is cut out. Both halves with lead are then glued together. The boards are cut into pencils, their outer side is polished.

Today, more than 300 types of pencils are produced for various activities. You can buy simple pencils of different hardness or order pencils in 72 colors! There are pencils for writing on glass, fabric, cellophane, plastic and film. There are pencils used in construction that leave marks on outdoor surfaces for years!

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

Was the first computer bug a real insect?

(English "bug" has several meanings: "bug" (in different senses) and "bug in the program" (computer slang).)

Yes and no.

Let's start with yes. In 1947, a US Navy Mark II computer in a large auditorium (without air conditioning) at Harvard University was disabled by an ordinary moth stuck between the contacts of an electromechanical relay. The operators removed the flattened insect, stuck it with adhesive tape in a technical journal with an accompanying entry, and only after that restarted the computer.

The mechanical nature of this machine made it particularly vulnerable to insect interference. Most of the early computers, such as the ENIAC ("Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer") at the University of Pennsylvania, were already electronic and used special vacuum tubes to protect against moths.

But did the term "bug" really come from the Harvard incident? Answer: no. In the meaning of "error" or "failure" in a particular mechanism, the word was used back in the 1889th century. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes an 1943 newspaper report about how Thomas Edison "was up for the last two nights trying to find a 'bug' in his phonograph." The XNUMX edition of Webster's Dictionary also gives the word "bug" in its modern sense.

Despite what numerous websites and books tell us, the term "debugging" was used long before the Harvard moth stalled the move of things.

Quite a telling example: life imitates language - a revived metaphor, literally.

Test your knowledge! Did you know...

▪ Which of the states in the UN has the largest area and which is the smallest?

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