Presumably, most distant ancestor of pencils and pens was the firebrand from the fire - it still drew cave paintings of our ancestors. A first for quite decorated stationery steel rods - wedge to writing on wet clay, they were used in ancient Assyria. The Greeks and Romans used the pointy sticks. Shepherds grazing flocks around Lake Borrowdale in Britain, have long noticed that the wool of their sheep is black if they rub against the local rocks. When this was announced to local scientists, they decided that, in Borrowdale on the surface there are deposits of lead, or 'black stone'.
Local residents immediately abandoned the sheep and began to make accessories for letters and called "black stones", black - it's "penalty", and the stone - 'das'. Put the rods made of black stone (graphite) in a wooden sheath suggested the French chemist Nicolas Conte in xviii century - it saves, actually graphite. In addition, it was found that produced by a method of pencil says more is better this way in the world there were pencils, first simple, colored pencils, there are almost beyond that long ago, as ordinary graphite. Their production process in terms of technology are generally similar. By the way, Microsoft has started producing electronic notepads on which to write just sticks: Bill Gates has been accused of what he turned to progress in the opposite direction. Clip, without which at present can not imagine their lives. Historians know that the safety pin for fastening different materials our ancestors used back in the Bronze Age.
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