In 1794, French inventor Nicolas-Jacques Conté devised a recipe to produce strong pencil cores from more plentiful, less-pure graphite. A version of his method of mixing graphite, clay and water ...

Creating different hardness' to pencils was discovered by Nicholas Jacques Conté. Mixing powdered graphite with clay and forming the mixture into rods that were then fired in a kiln. By varying ...

A batch of graphite has just been delivered to this pencil factory in Germany. Once it’s been thoroughly mixed with clay, it’s ready to go into production, with around 550 pounds of the stuff ...

The pencil “lead” is actually a mixture of graphite and clay. More clay in the mixture makes the lead harder. A harder lead has a higher number. Pencils are numbered from 1-3 but most people use a ...

Germany began mass-producing pencils in the 17th Century. In the late 18th Century, the Frenchman Nicolas-Jacques Conté pioneered a way of blending graphite and clay into a pencil lead - the ...

Unlike a standard pencil with a clay and graphite core, colored pencil sets are oil, water and wax-based. In addition, these pencils come in different sizes, quality and pigment proportions to ...