Pencil Day

A pencil (also called: graphite pencil) is a writing utensil with a graphite lead embedded in a wooden shaft. It is mainly used for artistic sketching and drawing, for stenography or notes. Its benefits are the simple usage as well as being able to remove what you've drawn with an eraser. Pencils today contain a mixture of graphite and clay, which was first introduced by Conté in 1795. Hymen Lipman received the first patent for attaching an eraser to the end of a pencil on March 30th in 1858.

The word 'pencil' comes from Old French pincel, and Latin penicillus or a "little tail" , and originally referred to an artist's fine brush of camel hair in the Middle Ages, although the use of a form of brush for drawing goes back to the early petrograph or cave paintings.

Early American pencils were made from Eastern Red Cedar, a strong, splinter-resistant wood that grew in Tennessee and other parts of the Southeastern United States.

The pencil changed the world because everyone could record knowledge and ideas.