Creating different hardness' to pencils was discovered by Nicholas Jacques Conté. Mixing powdered graphite with clay and forming the mixture into rods that were then fired in a kiln. By varying ...

A batch of graphite has just been delivered to this pencil factory in Germany. Once it’s been thoroughly mixed with clay, it’s ready to go into production, with around 550 pounds of the stuff ...

The graphite rods were inserted into a wooden holder, which the user could grip - and the pencil as we know it was born. Germany began mass-producing pencils in the 17th Century. In the late 18th ...