My Very First Quiz About Pencils!

Answer: Nuremberg

Although the discovery of a seam of pure graphite in the English Lake District in 1564 meant that, for a long time, England had the monopoly on the highest quality pencils, it was in Nuremberg in Germany that the first attempts to mass produce were made in 1662. Nuremberg companies like Faber-Castell and Staedtler came to dominate world pencil production. In the wake of the American Civil War, German companies including Faber-Castell, Eagle, and the General Pencil Company began establishing major factories in New York and New Jersey.

The first reference to what we think of as a modern pencil - a length of graphite encased in wooden slats - comes from a description by Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner, who wrote about it in 1565.

Answer: Benjamin Franklin

Founding Father, printer, author and prolific inventor Benjamin Franklin bought 'The Pennsylvania Gazette' - along with his partner Hugh Meredith - in 1729. Until it ceased publication in 1815 it was one of the most prominent newspapers in the United States. As well as providing a vehicle for Franklin's political writing, often under pseudonyms, the Gazette carried substantial amounts of classified adverts and notices.

Answer: HMS Bounty

The 'Pandora' sailed from Portsmouth in November 1790 after news reached England of the mutiny led by Fletcher Christian on HMS Bounty the year before. After arriving in Tahiti in March 1791, where 14 of the 'Bounty' crew were arrested, 'Pandora' continued an unsuccessful search of Pacific islands for Christian and the remaining mutineers for several months, before striking the Great Barrier Reef and sinking in August.

The shipwreck was discovered only in 1977 - almost perfectly preserved, 33 metres below sea level - and was partially excavated in a series of expeditions in the 1980s and 1990s, giving invaluable information about what life aboard naval ships was like at the time of Captain James Cook.

Answer: Pencil sharpener

Before the arrival of the mechanical pencil sharpener, pencils were sharpened with a knife or an abrasive material such as glasspaper or sandpaper. Cheap plastic sharpeners can cause havoc with your pencil tip, snapping it off just when you think it's sharp enough. My favourite was the hand cranked pencil sharpener that used to be quite common in school classrooms, although it was such fun to use that you could end up with no pencil at all!

Answer: Plug

No, not a rubber! Although that's what pencil erasers are usually called in Britain and used to be called in America too, a rubber now typically refers to something else altogether in America! The manufacturer's term, however, is 'plug', and it's attached to the finished pencil by a metal band called a ferrule.

The first patent for an eraser pencil was issued to Hymen Lipman (a name with its own scope for misunderstanding!) in Philadelphia in 1858. Although plugs were originally made of natural rubber, they tend nowadays to be made of synthetic rubber mixed with pumice for abrasion, or from vinyl.

Answer: Frank Lloyd Wright

In 1991, the American Institute of Architects described Wright as the greatest American architect of all time. He was responsible for the design of over 500 completed buildings, in which clean simple lines and open space featured strongly. He once said: "An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking bar at the site." As the photograph taken of pencils on his desk at the time of his death illustrates, he worked with colour pencils as well as black graphite ones.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is best known for designing the Seagram Building, Richard Morris Hunt for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and William F. Lamb for the Empire State Building - all in New York City.

Answer: St. Louis, Missouri

The pencil was made in 2007 by Ashrita Furman in Queens, New York. Furman has set more than 270 world records since 1979 and hold the Guinness world record for most world records! The pencil contains 4,000lbs of Pennsylvania graphite and is tipped with an eraser weighing 250lbs.

It's on display at the City Museum in St. Louis. Furman's pencil beat the previous 64-feet record for a pencil, which is on display at Faber-Castell's main Malaysian factory outside Kuala Lumpur.

Answer: China

Based on an average cedar tree having enough wood to produce 170,000 pencils, that means a whopping 82,353 trees are needed each year. Surprisingly, despite new communication technologies, pencil production has continued to soar. China produces over half of the world's pencils, while the USA produces about two billion units annually and exports American cedar to cheaper labour markets like China and Mexico, as well as being a major importer of Chinese pencils and component parts.

Indonesia, Brazil, Costa Rica and Thailand are also major producers. Cedar is considered the optimum wood for pencil casings, though in Russia white pine is used and basswood is popular in China. Recycled newspaper and plastic polymers are also widely used for cheaper pencil casings.

Answer: John Steinbeck

Steinbeck wrote most of his published work using pencils, and wrote for six hours each day. The writing of 'East of Eden' (1952) is reputed to have used up more than 300 pencils. He insisted that his pencils were round-shaped, since hexagonal pencils would cut his fingers by the end of a day's work. "Sometimes just the pure luxury of long, beautiful pencils charges me with energy and invention," he wrote as he prepared to start writing 'East of Eden'.

Although he said he'd never found the perfect pencil, his favourites were the 'Blackwing 602' and 'Mongol 480 #2' - both eraser pencils made by Eberhard Faber.

Answer: All of them

Yes, as long as you ensure they're non-toxic pencils, and preferably before you've sharpened them, they're available for all sorts of uses. Maybe that explains why pencil production continues to grow even though we're all texting and blogging each other these days instead of writing letters. Please do write to me with your ideas for alternative uses - maybe that could be the theme for 'My Second Quiz About Pencils'!