Re: OT More pens (was Re: Phoneme winnowing continues)

Barry Garcia scripsit:

> And as john said, it's cultural lag. I mean pencils were still being
> called "lead pencils" when i was a little kid and they were already made
> of graphite then (and i assume even 30 years prior). I think some tests
> i've taken have specified a "Graphite pencil" as a required implement.
I did a bit of research.  The cultural lag in this case is centuries old.
Natural hard graphite was first used in pencils in the 1560s, though
the fact that it was really carbon, not lead, wasn't nailed down until
1779 by Carl Scheele.  In 1795, the modern process using a mixture of
powdered graphite and clay which is then fired in an oven was developed.
The mechanical pencil had several independent inventors around 1915.

> Oh and if you ever get a piece of lead, it does work well to draw with.
> It's soft enough it will leave marks on paper.
ObLang: "pencil" is from Latin "penicillus", the diminutive of "penis",
probably in the sense "tail" rather than "male organ".

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