No one knows who invented pencils or when it happened. A
Swiss describe a pencil in a book in 1565. He said it was a piece of
wood with lead inside it. (Lead is a very heavy metal.) Pencils weren’t
popular, and people continued to write with pens. They used bird feathers
as pens. Then in 1795 someone started making
pencils from graphite and they became very popular. Graphite is a
kind of coal. (Coal is black, and we burn it for heat and energy.) Today
people make pencils in the same way. They grind the graphite,
make it into the shape of a stick, and bake it. Then they put it inside a piece
of woods. One pencil can write50,000 English words or make a line 55 kilometers long. People wrote with feather pens and
then used pens with metal points. They had to dip the point into ink
after every few letters. Next someone invented a fountain pen that
could hold ink inside it. A fountain pen can write several pages before you
have to fill it again. Two Hungarian brothers, Ladislao and Georg
Biro, invented the ballpoint pen that we all use today. They left
Hungary and started making ballpoint pens in English in 1943 during World War
II. English pilotsliked the pens. They couldn’t write
with fountain pens in airplanes because the ink leaked out.
Latter, a French company called Bic bought the Biro’s company. Some people call ballpoint pens a
bic. Australians call them biros. Whatever we call them.
we use them every day.
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