The Everyday Designs series here at Design Droplets is dedicated to those interesting pieces of design that we use on an almost daily basis.
The Lead Pencil
Designer/Inventor: Kaspar Faber, 1760
Materials: Wood and Graphite
The first modern lead pencil was manufactured by Kaspar Faber in 1760 and he opened his pencil shop in 1761. Prior to Faber’s method of manufacture which utilized a narrow stick of graphite glued between two pieces of wood, the Bernacotti’s of Italy devised blue prints for the modern day carpentry pencil. The Bernacotti method of production was to hollow out a stick of juniper wood and then insert a stick of graphite.
Then in 1795 Nicolas Conté a French chemist developed a compound mixture of clay and graphite that brought about a more superior method of manufacture. The compound mixture was fired in a kiln before being inserted into a wooden case.
In 1839 Joann Faber mechanized pencil manufacture through the implementation of stream power and in 1851 his descendant Eberhard Faber built the world’s first pencil factory in New York, USA.
Hymen Lipman received a patent for attaching an eraser to the end of a pencil in 1851. Then in 1862 Lipman sold his patent to a man by the name of Joseph Reckendorfer. Reckendorfer then sued the pencil company Faber for patent infringement.
The humble pencil is now utilized millions of times a day by many designers the world over.
