On March 30, 1858, inventor Hymen L. Lipman patented the first pencil with a built-in eraser—then sold it for $100,000. Believe it or not, this is not the first time in history that a little stick of ...

IntroductionIn the modern era of note-taking and journaling, where ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils dominate, the choice ...

Even if you're a pencil aficionado, you might find out something new from this video on the history of pencil lead from NPR. Like, for example, that Henry David Thoreau helped invent the numbering ...

From Pencils You Should Know: A History of the Ultimate Writing Utensil in 75 Anecdotes by Caroline Weaver (published by Chronicle Books 2020, all images courtesy Chronicle Books) I hadn’t thought of ...

Despite the name, pencils have never been made with lead. They’re made with graphite, a form of carbon. Just where does graphite come from, and why did we decided to write with it? NPR took a look ...

A class of fifth-graders from Green Acres Elementary in Lebanon, Ore., asked us to find out how pencil lead is made. That quest took us all the way back to the dawn of the universe and then all the ...

The Pencil Museum by Jackie Mock, installed in Faber Park on Staten Island (photo by Rob Ventura, courtesy Jackie Mock and the New York City Parks Department) Suspended in a vitrine in Staten Island’s ...

With the increasing dominance of touchscreen technology, one might think that the pencil as a writing instrument is doomed.(Angie Garrett CC BY 2.0) There is something wholesome about the humble ...