Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1886 — There Are No Lead Pencils. [ARTICLE]

There Are No Lead Pencils.

There is no lead pencil in existence to-day, and there have been none for more than forty years past. There was a time when a spirale of lead cut from the bar or sheet sufficed to make marks on white paper or some roughed abrading material. The name lead pencil pomes from the old no ion that the products of the Cumberland mines in England are lead, instead of being plumbago or graphite, a carbonate of iron, capable of leaving a lead-colored mark. With the original lead pencil or strip, and with the earlier styles of the lead pencil made direct from the Cumberland mines, the wetting of the pencil was a necessary preliminary of writing. But since it has become a manufacture, the lead pencil is adapted by numbers or letters to each particular design. There are all grades of hardness, from the pencil that can be sharpened down to a needle point to the one which cannot make other than a broad mark. Between these two extremes are a number of gradations which cover all the uses of the lead pencil. These gradations are made by taking the original carbonate and grinding and mixing it with a fine quality of clay, in different proportions, according to the quality of the pencil required to be produced. The mixture is made thoroughly and then squeezed through dies to form and size it, after which it is dried and incased in its wooden envelope.—New York Mail and Express.