From Pencils You Should Know: A History of the Ultimate Writing Utensil in 75 Anecdotes by Caroline Weaver (published by Chronicle Books 2020, all images courtesy Chronicle Books) I hadn’t thought of ...

If you ever asked me to define what a pencil is, I might say “Well, it’s a writing or drawing tool with a stick of graphite ...

“Jimmie” Howard was 8 years old when he began sharing his love of pencils with the world outside Scranton. He was a collector with a cabinet to fill. His dad, James, built it to hold 4,000 pencils, ...

A class of fifth-graders from Green Acres Elementary in Lebanon, Ore., asked us to find out how pencil lead is made. That quest took us all the way back to the dawn of the universe and then all the ...

The Pencil Museum by Jackie Mock, installed in Faber Park on Staten Island (photo by Rob Ventura, courtesy Jackie Mock and the New York City Parks Department) Suspended in a vitrine in Staten Island’s ...

Despite the name, pencils have never been made with lead. They’re made with graphite, a form of carbon. Just where does graphite come from, and why did we decided to write with it? NPR took a look ...

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