30 March is National Pencil Day and celebrates the day Hymen Lipman received the first patent to attach an eraser to the end of a pencil.
The majority of pencils made are painted yellow and it is believed that this tradition began in 1890 when the L & C Hardtmuth Company of Austria-Hungary introduced their Koh-I-Noor brand. This brand was named after the famous diamond and the pencil was intended to be the world’s best and most expensive one. Other companies began to copy the yellow colour in an effort to have their pencils associated with the high quality brand.
According to Wikipedia, the following people were notable pencil users:
• Thomas Edison, who had his pencils specially made by Eagle pencil. Each one was three inches long, thicker than standard pencils and had softer graphite than was normally available
• Vladimir Nabokov rewrote everything he had ever published – usually several times – in pencil
• John Steinbeck was an obsessive pencil user and is said to have used as many as 60 a day. He used up more than 300 pencils writing his novel, East of Eden
• Vincent van Gogh only used Faber pencils, because he believed they were ‘superior to Carpenter’s pencils, a capital black and most agreeable’
• Johnny Carson regularly played with pencils at his Tonight Show desk. These pencils were specially made with erasers at both ends to avoid on-set accidents
• Roald Dahl only used pencils in yellow casings to write his books. He had six sharpened pencils ready at the beginning of every day and it is said that he only re-sharpened them when all six became unusable
To celebrate today, get some new pencils and use #NationalPencilDay to post on social media.
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