Pencil Day - March 30

Pencil Day is celebrated on March 30 each year in honor of Hymen Lipman's Patent Registration No. 19,783.

The pencil is a manual writing tool, consisting of a graphite rod that is usually coated with wood.

Graphite is the material that when rubbed with paper, it leaves tiny crumbs on it that form the lines drawn by it.

The difference between a pencil and other writing tools is that his drawings or writing can be erased with an eraser, as opposed to pens and markers.

In an average pencil you can write about 50,000 words before it ends.

When the tip of the pencil fades, sharpen the tip of the pencil with a sharpener.

The history of the pencil

In Roman times and perhaps before they began to use lead engravings for writing on papyrus. These engravings were called penicillus, hence the English word for pencil, pencil.

In 1564, residents of Cumbria, England, discovered graphite deposits where sheep could be marked.

They mistakenly thought that graphite was lead, and called it plumbago (acting like lead, from the Latin name for lead, Plumbum).  

In the 17th century, pencils began to be mass-produced in Germany.

In 1802, the Kohinor Artemoth company patented the production of a pencil core made of a mixture of graphite and clay. (Source: Wikipedia)

Why are most pencils yellow?

Most of the pencils made in the world are painted yellow. It is believed that this tradition began in 1889 when the Czech company Kohinor Aradmoth introduced their yellow pencil and named it after the famous Indian diamond, Koh-I-Noor. This pencil is considered the best and most expensive pencil in the world. Other companies then began copying the color yellow so that their pencils would resemble the prestigious Cohinore brand.

Did you know?

Thomas Edison had pencils specially designed by Eagle Pencils. Each pencil was three inches long (so it would fit in his coat pocket), thicker than standard pencils and with softer graphite than the graphite of regular pencils. Edison ordered thousands of pencils from the company and once wrote them a complaint that "the last shipment was too short" and "the pencils contorted and stuck to his pocket."  (Source)

The writer Vladimir Nabokov ("Lolita") rewrote everything he had ever published, usually several times, in pencil. 

 

Writer John Steinbeck ("Grapes of Wrath," "East of Eden") was an obsessive pencil user who used 60 pencils a day. To write his novel "Kedmat Eden" he used more than 300 pencils.

Johnny Carson

TV presenter Johnny Carson would play pencils regularly over his desk on the Tonight Show. These pencils are specially made with erasers at both ends, to prevent accidents.

Writer Roald Dahl used only pencils with a yellow cover to write his books. He had 6 sharpened pencils ready at the beginning of each day and only when all 6 pencils became unusable did he sharpen them.

March 30 is also "I am in control" day and Doctors' Day