did you know...
A pencil can draw a 35-mile-long line

A regular pencil could draw a line 35 miles long. It can be sharpened 17 times and write 45,000 words

• The word pencil comes from the Latin penicillus, which means little tail or little brush.

• It is believed that pencil was invented more than 400 years ago, in 1565. The English first made the graphite pencil in the mid-16th century. The Germans were the first to enclose the graphite in a wood case in the mid 17th century. In 1795, Nicolas Jacques Conte of France developed a pencil-making process that is still used today. It wasn’t until 1861 that Eberhard Faber built the first mass-produced pencil factory in the USA.

• A good-size tree will make about 300,000 pencils.

• Another interesting fact about pencils is that they didn’t have erasers on them until 100 years ago, for teachers felt they would encourage children to make mistakes. Joseph Rechendorfer was the first person who thought of putting a eraser onto the top of a pencil.

• More than 14 billion pencils are produced in the world every year — enough to circle the globe 62 times.

• As opposed to popular belief, pencils do not contain lead. They contain graphite and clay.

• Famous novelists Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck used pencils to write their books.

— Compiled by Gaurav Sood