SUBSTITUTES FOR INK UTENSILS ("LEAD" AND OTHER
PENCILS).
"BLACK-LEAD" PENCILS AN EXCELLENT PEN SUBSTITUTE
UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS--ITS COMPOSITION--
"BLACK-LEAD" CONTAINS NO LEAD, HENCE
THE NAME IS MISAPPLIED--THE DISCOVERY OF ITS
PRINCIPAL SOURCE OF SUPPLY AN ACCIDENT--A
DESCRIPTION OF HOW IT IS MINED--TREATMENT
BEFORE BEING INTRODUCED INTO THE GROOVED
WOOD--USE OF RED AND BLACK CHALK PENCILS
IN GERMANY, 1450--THEIR USE IN MEXICO IN EARLY
TIMES--WHO MANUFACTURES LEAD PENCILS--EMPLOYMENT
OF THE COMPOSITION OF LEAD AND TIN
IN MEDIAEVAL TIMES--BAVARIAN GOVERNMENT IN
1816 A MANUFACTURER OF LEAD PENCILS.
THE black-lead pencil, under many circumstances,
is a very useful substitute for the pen, in that it
requires no liquid ink for marking the characters on
paper or other materials. The peculiar substance
which fills the central channel of the stick of cedar
has the property of marking when it touches paper;
and, as the marks thus made are susceptible to easy
removal, a pencil of this kind is available for purposes
which would not be answered by the use of pen and ink.
The substance misnamed "black-lead" contains NO
LEAD and is a carburet of iron, being composed of
carbon and iron. It generally occurs in Mountain districts,
in small kidney-shaped pieces, varying in size
from that of a pea upwards, which are interspersed
among various strata, and is met with in different
parts of the world.
Its principal source of supply until about 1845,
when it became exhausted, was the Borrowdale mine
in Cumberland, England, which was discovered in
1564. About 1852 a number of mines were opened
containing this substance in Siberia and from which
place the best products are now obtained.
The accidental discovery of this mineral at Borrowdale
was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth who
made many inquiries about it. The name of this
mineral was locally known as wad (graphite). So
valuable was it regarded that it commanded a very
high price, and this price acted as in inducement to
the workmen and others to pilfer pieces from the
mine. For a number of years scenes of great commotion
took place, arising out of these depredations; and
the result was that the proprietors adopted such
stringent rules that hardly anything was known of
the internal economy of the mine till about sixty
years ago, when Mr. Parkes gave a description of it,
from which I may condense a few particulars.
The mine is in the midst of a mountain about two
thousand feet high, which rises at in angle of about
45 degrees; and, as that part of the mine which has been
worked during the last century is near the middle
of the mountain, the present entrance is about a
thousand feet from the summit. The opening by
which the workmen enter descends by a flight of
steps; and in order to guard the treasure within, the
proprietors have erected a strong brick building of
four rooms, one of which is immediately over the
entrance into the mine. This entrance is secured by a
trap-door, and the room connected with it serves as a
dressing-room for the men when they enter and leave
the mine. The men work in gangs, which relieve
each other every six hours, and when the hour of
relief comes, a steward or foreman attends the dressing-
room to see the men change their dresses as they
come up one by one out of the mine. The clothes
are examined by the steward to see that no black-lead
is concealed in them; and when the men have dressed
they leave the mine, making room for another gang,
who change their clothes, enter the mine, and are fastened
in for six hours. In one of the four rooms of which
the house consists there is a table, at which men are
employed in sorting and dressing the mineral. This is
necessary, because it is usually divided into two qualities,
the finest of which have generally pieces of iron-
ore or other impurity attached to them, which must
be dressed off. These men, who are strictly watched
while at work, put the dressed black-lead into casks
holding about one hundred-weight each, in which state
it leaves the mine. The casks are conveyed down
the side of the mountain in a curious manner. Each
cask is fixed upon a light sledge with two wheels,
and a man, who is well used to the precipitous path,
walks down in front of the sledge, taking care that it
does not acquire momentum enough to overpower
him. When the cask has been thus guided safely to
the bottom, the man carries the sledge up hill upon
his shoulders, and prepares for another descent.
Up to about the middle of the eighteenth century the
mine was opened only once in seven years, the quantity
taken out at each time of opening being such as was
deemed sufficient to serve the market for seven years;
but when, at a later period, it was found that the
demand was increasing and the supply decreasing, it
was deemed necessary to work the mine six or seven
weeks every year. During the time of working, the
mine is guarded night and day; and when a quantity
sufficient for one year's consumption has been taken
out, the mine is secured until the following year.
Several hundred cartloads of rubbish are wheeled into
the mine, so as to block up the entrance completely;
and this rubbish acts as a dam to prevent the springs
and land waters from flowing out, so that the mine
gradually becomes flooded.
When the Year's mining is concluded, the barrels
of black-lead are brought to market, and the mode
of effecting the sales was described by Dr. Faraday
some years ago to be as follows: A market is held on
the first Monday of every month at a house in London,
where the buyers, who are generally only seven
or eight in number, examine each piece with a sharp
instrument to ascertain its hardness, those which are
too soft being rejected. The person who has the
first choice pays 45s. per pound, the others 30s.
But, as there is no addition made to the first quantity
in the market, the residual portions are examined
over and over again until they are exhausted. At
one time the annual sale was said to amount to the
value of L40,000 per annum, but it has been greatly
reduced since.
A mode of applying manufacturing processes to
the preparation of black-lead is described by Dr.
Ure as being adopted in Paris. The mineral, being
reduced to a fine powder, is mixed with very pure
powdered clay, and the two are calcined in a crucible
at a white heat; the proportion of clay employed
is greater as the pencil is required to be harder,
the average being equal parts of both. The
ingredients are ground with a muller on a porphyry slab and
then made into balls, which are preserved in a moist
atmosphere in the form of paste. The paste is pressed
into grooves cut in a smooth board, and another board,
previously greased, is pressed down upon it. When
the paste has had time to dry, the mould or grooved
board is put into a moderately heated oven, by which
the paste, now in the form of square pencils, shrinks
sufficiently to fall out of the grooves. In order to
give solidity to the pencils they are set upright in a
crucible and surrounded with pounded charcoal, fine
sand, or sifted ashes; the crucible, being covered, is
exposed to a degree of heat proportionate to the
hardness required in the pencils, the harder pencils
requiring the higher degree of heat. Some of the
pencils are shaped in a curious manner: models of the
pencils, made of iron, are stuck upright upon an iron
tray, having edges raised as high as the intended
length of the pencils; and a metallic alloy, made of
tin, lead, antimony and bismuth is poured into the
sheet-iron tray. When the alloy has cooled, it is inverted
and shaken off from the model-rods, so as to
form a mass of metal perforated throughout with
tubular cavities corresponding in size with the intended
pencil pieces; the pencil paste is introduced
by pressure into these cavities, and when nearly dry
the pieces shrink sufficiently to be easily removed
from the cavities.
The pencils just described are alike throughout all
their thickness, but in the majority of English pencils
there is a wooden holder to contain a narrow
filament of black lead running down the middle. So
long ago as the year 1618 this mode was adopted; for
Sir John Pettus, who was deputy governor of the
Borrowdale mine under Charles II, in his "Fleta
Minor," while, speaking of black-lead says, that "Of
late it is curiously formed into cases of deal or cedar
and so sold as dry pencils, something more useful than
pen and ink." In a general way modern black-lead
pencils, are made by sawing cedar first into long
planks, and then into smaller rods; grooves are cut
out by means of a cutting machine moved by a fly-
wheel to such a depth as will receive a small layer of
black-lead; the pieces of the mineral are cut into thin
slabs and then into rods the same size as the grooves,
into which they are inserted; the two halves of the
case are then glued together, and the whole is turned
into a cylindrical form by means of a guage.
The kind of pencil called "crayon" is a mixture
of some kind of earth with a coloring substance.
The earth employed is sometimes chalk, and at other
times pipe-clay, gypsum, starch-flour, or ochre. The
coloring substance is yellow ochre, mineral yellow,
chrome, red chalk, vermilion, indigo--indeed, any of
the usual dry colors, according to the tint required.
Besides the earth and the color, there is a gummy liquid
required to combine them together; gum arabic, gum
tragacanth, and in some cases oil, wax, or suet, are
used as the third ingredient. The crayons here alluded
to are employed rather for drawing than for writing,
but they obviously belong to the class of pencils in
their mode of action.
The ancients drew lines and letters with wooden
styles, and afterward an alloy of lead and tin was
used. Pliny refers to the use of lead for ruling lines
on papyrus. La Moine cites a document of 1387
ruled with graphite. Slips of graphite in wooden
sticks (pencils) are mentioned by Gesner, of Zurich, in
1565; he credits England with the production. They
are doubtless the product of the Borrowdale mine,
then lately discovered. In the early part of the seventeenth
century black-lead pencils are distinctly described
by several writers. They are noticed by
Ambrosinus, 1648; spoken of by Pettus, in 1683, as
inclosed in fir or cedar.
Red and black chalk pencils were used in Germany
in 1450; in fact, fragments of chalk, charcoal, and
shaped sticks of colored minerals had been in use
since times previous to all historic mention.
When Cortez landed in Mexico, in 1520, he found
the Aztecs using graphite crayons, which were probably
made from a mineral found in Sonora.
The firm of A. W. Faber are the largest manufacturers
of lead pencils in the world. They have compiled
a history of this implement of handwriting which
they have permitted me to use in the story which
follows.
The lead pencil is an invention of modern times,
and its introduction may deservedly be ranked with
the large number of technical innovations in which
more especially the last three centuries have been so
rich; nor can it be denied that pencils have played
an important part in the diffusion of arts and sciences
and in facilitating study and intellectual intercourse.
To the classic ages and their art the pencil, and in
general every application of lead as a writing material,
was entirely unknown, and it was not till the advent
of the middle ages that it began to be used for this
purpose. This lead, i. e. metallic lead, however, was
in no way equivalent to the graphite or black-lead of
our pencils, which are only honored with the prefix
of "lead," owing to the leaden color of the writing
done with them.
Moreover, in those days, lead was used exclusively
for ruling and in no way for writing or drawing; it
was employed in the form of round, sharp-edged discs,
similar to those which, it is said, were already used
for the same purpose in ancient classic times. It is
only with the development and growth of modern
painting that traces of pencil-like drawings first begin
to be met. At so early a period even as the fourteenth
century, mention is made by the masters of that
time, more especially by the brothers Van Eyck, and
again in the fifteenth century by Menlink and others,
of studies or compositions which were made with an
instrument similar to a lead pencil, upon a paper with
chalk prepared surface.
This type of drawing was commonly classed as "silver-
style," a term, however, which was no doubt
erroneous, as there could be no question of the use of
pure silver in this connection.
In the same way it is also reported of the later
mediaeval Italian artists that they drew their subjects
in "silver-style," upon planished fig-tree wood, the
surface of which had been prepared with the powder
obtained from calcined bones,--a method, however,
which seems only to have been employed in exceptional
instances.
But in the fourteenth century, drawings were frequently
done in Italy with pencils consisting of a
mixture cast from lead and tin; these drawings could
easily be erased with bread crumbs.
Petrarch's "Laura" was portrayed in this manner
by one of his contemporaries, and the method was
still in vogue in the days of Michael Angelo. From
Italy these pencils subsequently found their way to
Germany, but it is not apparent under what particular
name. In Italy itself they were called "stili," the
equivalent of the word stylus. At no time, however,
do these varieties seem to have been the predominating
material used for drawing purposes.
In conjunction with these, pens were used for
writing and drawing, and at the zenith of the art
period of those days black and red crayons were also
used on a large scale. The Italians imported the best
qualities of red crayons from Germany, the best black
chalk being obtained from Spain.
Vasari writes of a certain sixteenth century artist,
that he was equally skillful in handling the stylus or
the pen, black chalk or red crayon.
It was this period which witnessed the discovery of
plumbago, a mineral which was soon worked up into
an entirely new material for writing and drawing,--
the lead pencil.
This discovery, which was destined to confer such
great benefits not only upon practical life, but also
upon art, was made in England during the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, for in the year 1564 the celebrated
black-lead mines of Borrowdale, in Cumberland, were
discovered. With the opening of this mine, the first
material steps were taken to implant on English soil
a lead pencil industry which in the course of time was
to assume important dimensions.
The first lead pencils are supposed to have been
manufactured in England in the second half of the
sixteenth century. The raw plumbago, or "wad," as
it was locally termed, was subjected to the following
treatment: "On reaching the surface it was sawn
into strips of the required size, and these, without any
further manipulation, were inserted into the wood.
Strange though it may appear, the lead pencils first
manufactured in this manner are acknowledged to have
been the best--and even at the beginning of the present
century they remained unsurpassed upon the
score of the softness and fine tone of the lead. Although
the Cumberland lead pencils were in great demand
owing to the fact that they were the first to
successfully meet a long-felt want, they nevertheless
owed their permanent and wide-spread reputation--
more especially in artistic circles--to their excellent
quality.
Towards the end of the last century the black-lead
pencil industry was introduced into France, where
with some restrictions it soon developed.
With the removal of all restrictions on industrial
freedom in 1795, the idea was entertained of using
clay as a binding medium for black-lead. This
method offered several advantages, for not only did
the addition of clay cause a saving of a large percentage
of the valuable mineral, but it greatly facilitated
the method of manufacture, so that lead pencils
could now be offered at greatly reduced prices.
By these improvements a new era in the manufacture
of lead pencils was begun in France. Still,
there remained much to be done in the field of black-
lead pencil making in order to do justice to the increasing
demands of art and the requirements of more
civilized life.
It is true, different kinds of lead pencils of various
degrees were produced, but they did not comply by a
long way with the different uses for which they were
needed. The manipulation of the brittle material
required not only deep study, but also conscientious
and skillful workmen, in order to impart the necessary
standard of perfection to the lead pencil.
Among the various German industries the manufacture
of black-lead pencils occupied but a very
modest place.
The first traces of its existence are to be found at
Stein, a village not far from Nuremberg. As far back
as the year 1726 the church registers mention marriages
between "black-lead pencil makers," and, at a
later date references are found in the same registers
to "black-lead cutters" of both sexes.
The manufacture of black-lead pencils, however,
occupied a position on the very lowest rung of the
industrial ladder.
But is time proceeded the Bavarian government
directed their attention to this branch of industry,
and did all in their power to encourage it; and, as
early as the year 1766, a Count von Kronsfeld obtained
a concession to establish a lead pencil factory
at Jettenbach. Later on, in the year 1816, the
Bavarian government established a royal lead pencil
manufactory at Obernzell (Hafnerzell), and introduced
into it the French process, described above, of using
clay as a binding medium for graphite.