In 1565, Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner published a drawing of a strip of graphite inside a tube of wood — the first depiction of a wood pencil. The invention swiftly spread through Europe.

The ubiquitous writing and drawing utensil may seem as commonplace ... told us that his undergrad professors recommended using wooden pencils in a range of leads (like the above Staedtlers ...

The ordinary, dumb wooden pencil is, in the poetic words of Henry ... Konrad Gesner published a book about fossils that featured a drawing of a new kind of writing implement for taking notes ...