Why Your Pencil is Marked H.B.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8000, 12 December 1905, Page 4

Why Your Pencil is Marked H.B.

Round pencils are easy to grasp, but they roll otf your desk, which is why hexagona. pencils arc preferred by such professional men as architects and engineers. The carpenter likes his pencil oval for convenience in ruling, and the city man prefers his flat because it will lie neatly in bis waist-coai pocket. A good pencil works easy, and is flee from grit. This apart, there is'no golden rule for discovering the article ; people differ tiemendntisly in their tastes. Th« shorthand clelk may find a drawing pencil suited to liifl tontb, and an artist may tiud a joiner's pencil " jti«l the ticket." There is a great variety to choose from now-a-days, one linn alone making pencils in seventeen distinct grades of hardness, though the average number of grades for a pennt pencil is about half-a-dozen. Outside appearance—brilliant polish and the like—should no! be taken too much into account. It should lie borne in mind that many of "the best pencils are still sold in,plain cellar, while some of the veriest foreign rubbish is fancifully got up.

For the origin of the term'• pencil "it is necessary to go 'mck to the time of the 1.0-mans, mans, "tn their high-sounding Latin they termed a brush used for writing purposes a " pcnecillus.' or '• little tail," which, indeed, it generally was, having previously adorned the rear of some small animal. The name stuck when, later on. people took to writing oh paper with pieces of ordinary lead, and x-as finally cut down to " pencil." It was no! till the opening of the celebrated bbii-klead mine in liorrowdale, Cumberland, in l"lil,that pencils began to be made in the form we now know them.

For generations the country folks about BniTowibile had known little of the actual value of this treasure of graphite in their midst. They used it as a lubricant—a lead pencil is stiil a cure for a squeaking door—marked their sheep with it, and recklessly took it in powder as a "remedy" for the cote.

With the opening of the mine came a vast altc|ition. In those days the. bad was just cut into strips with a saw. and tilted, without any preparation whatever, into a wooden holder; but the pencils, crude as they were, were accepted as veritaiih treasures, and sold at incredible prices. The exportation of tile precious material was strictly forbidden, and the mine was only worked fix weeks in the year, yet in this short petioil woiild net for the lucky owners' quite iin.nnn !

i.\nvf»dnys every unkrr" products ■ pencils for a variety of out of the way purposf*. JbjsiuVspencils suited to all sorts of trades Jiind pntfessions, an annual demand comes from all over the country for such articles as the pencil.-; used .in p-dlinj; bonthts at elections. A curious point about these election pencils is that they arc always sent out sharpened by the manufacturer, and when worn down nre seldom but are either thrown a\v;iy or hi conic the perquisite of the polling clerk. Tlil-so pensils are provided with a hole, through which a string is Another envious pencil is one for writing on the luiiiiiin skin. I'iopLi-Iy spcnhiriK, this is what i.- known as a surgical pencil, being used hy the hospital doctors lo.map out those portions of :i patient's anuldmy on which they propose to operate. People arc often puzzled by the leltci-s on lend pencils. These, however, lire quite easy to understand Broadly speaking " H " stands for "lmvcl," and the more " H's" there are on a pencil the harder iUis. "15" stand* for "soft," and the more "B's" there are the softer it is. "II" is plainly the initial letter of the word " hard." But "B" is not the initial letter in " soft," and it is here where many people are puzzled. The explanation is that "I!" stands for "Muck," which means "soft," for the hlaeker the marks a pencil produces, the softer as a rule is the lead. In the same way " K " means " fine," and " EHIJ " and " JJEIIU " stand for "extra hard black " and " double extra hard black" respectively. More " HB's" arc sold than all other pencils put together, the " lIU *' being a sort of composite pencil standing between the hards and the softs, and therefore well suited to the requirements of the average man. The Mina. The Mina, one of the Crackle species of birds, found in tropical and sub-tropical-countries, excels all other birds or animals in its imitative powers, and particularly in the imitation of human speech. When "domesticated thpse birds far excel the p-.rrota, both in picking up the word.] and speech of tho?e by whom they' are surrounded, tnd in tin distinctness with which thi; ipiak the words ■od aentencea learnt.