A simple pencil is called a simple pencil because it writes with ordinary graphite without the addition of dyes. It is also simple because it is simple, it is easy for them to write and it is just as easy to delete the result of their activity.
The history of a simple pencil goes back more than one hundred years. This invention is largely due to the Cumberland sheep, who rubbed their sides against the stones of local rocks and returned to their pens with stained wool. This was noticed by the shepherds, after which the breed of "dirty rocks" began to be used for the production of simple pencils.
Why are they called simple
Simple - because the most common, with a simple lead without the addition of dye. All the rest are divided into colored, coal or chemical, that is, their structure is more complex, requiring the addition of dyes.
At first, people wrote with clean rods that were carved from the aforementioned rocks in England and wrapped in braid. And only in 1761 the Germans opened a factory, which began to produce pencils we are used to, enclosed in a wooden shell. Although even then the manufacturers continued to believe that the pencil shaft was made of lead, and it was only at the end of the eighteenth century that the mineral, studied and enclosed in a wooden shell, was given the name "graphite".
In the course of all further experiments and tests, graphite was given the required hardness or softness by adding clay, starch, soot, water, etc. Today, on all pencils you can find information about hardness and softness, for example, the marking "T" or the Latin "H" means that the pencil is hard, "M" or "B" is soft, and "TM" or "HB" is hard-soft, respectively.
For the manufacture of the body of a simple pencil, different types of trees are used, more and more often plastic is used in this capacity, although the most solid products are obtained from Siberian cedar. So that in the future the finished product does not break and it is easy to sharpen it, the wood is impregnated with paraffin in special units - autoclaves. After that, the wood undergoes a drying procedure. It is easy to see that the graphite rod in a simple pencil is framed by two halves of glued boards. These are also production features.
Colour pencils
The process of making such pencils differs not only in the addition of dyes, but also in the firing technology: graphite in simple pencils is fired twice, and the mixture for rods of colored analogs enters the furnace only once.
It is believed that pencils are also called simple because they are simply arranged and it is very easy to draw a line on paper with them. And also because this trail can be easily erased with an ordinary eraser, which is impossible in the case of chemical and colored pencils.
