kumarPENCIL

When I think of a few names in the hi-tech world, what spontaneously comes to my mind are computers, fax machines, typewriters and more of the sensitive electronic devices. Can any of us dare imagine our lives without their presence? The fact is that they have brought a phenomenal change in pace of growth of mankind. Our work is lot easier and faster than before.

To talk about any of these hi-tech devices is not my cup of tea. I have with me the facts about the simplest, low-tech writing device – A PENCIL !!

Every time a child steps into the world of knowledge and education, a pencil guides its little fingers to write and understand the very first alphabets.

This poor cousin of writing world shares no glamour with pens and markers. We always make ‘pen-pals’, use ‘pen-knives’ and ‘pen-down’ something. No one ‘pencils’ a line of poetry or claims that ‘the slender rod of wooden graphite is mightier than the sword’. Even then this humble implement endures. Our first choice of making lists, doodling, writing messages and nervously chewing at the back are pencils. Don’t we frequently borrow pencils from our colleague’s desk and rarely bother to return them? Imagine doing the same with an expensive Parker or Sheffers pen or even an ordinary Pilot. Our colleagues would surely mind. Won’t they?

In this hi-tech era, this low-tech wooden cylinder holds on its own. Pencils can write under water and in outer space. Inexpensive and nearly weightless, they can be easily carried in a soldier’s knapsack. It does not require any refilling or charging to be used. Pencils beat word processors when it comes to propping windows open, lubricating stuck zippers or pinning-up long hair on a sunny afternoon. A standard length can draw a line up to 50 km long. It can write more than 45000 words before becoming an unusual nub.

Some trace the history of pencils to Greek and Romans, but the equipment as we know it today wasn’t born until 1564 when an oak tree in Borrowdale, England was blown down revealing an underground lode of pure graphite. That being mistaken for lead today accounts for the misnomer ‘lead pencils’. The name pencil comes from the Latin word ‘Penicillius’ – little tail. The English encased this graphite in cedar wood and this new-fangled device took on immediately.

Pencils are made of graphite and fine clay. More the composition of graphite, darker the pencil and lower the designation. E.g. number 2 are dark enough to be read by a computer whereas number 10 are very light, fit to be used by an artist.

Ernst Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Archibald MacLeish and John Steinbuck all used pencils to tap their creative juices. Other than these literary lights, scientist like Thomas Alva Edison always carried a short pencil to sketch his inventions. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his former Herbert Hoover both were fond of pencil for its terseness and clarity.

The greatest concentration of pencils may be found on the floors of New York Stock Exchange where an estimated 1 million are reduced to stubs each year.

When pencil runs with the human mind the eraser, fastened to it with a ferrule at the back hides the gravest of human errors.

Even now if you have doubts about the utility of pencils a little experiment would sure help. Try scratching your back with a personal computer and you will know at least one reason why we have been pushing pencils for 500 years now.

Article by Rimjhim Kumar, Student at CTL College.