The modern pencil was born in 16th-century England, where, in Cumbria, a major deposit of graphite was found. Today, a pencil museum in Keswick honors the site, the cottage pencil industry that followed, and the area’s claim to fame as the place where the first pencil factory was founded in 1832. The earliest pencils had square graphite cores. A strip of solid graphite would be cut to fit into a groove that had been channeled out of a...Continue Reading