Pencil History: The Earliest Forms of Self Expression The first mass-produced pencils were natural and unpainted
were natural and unpainted to show off
Did you know that modern pencils owe it all to an ancient Roman writing
instrument called a stylus? Scribes used this thin metal rod to leave a light,
but readable mark on papyrus (an early form of paper). Other early styluses
were made of lead, which is what we still call pencil cores, even though
they actually are made of non-toxic graphite. But pencil history doesn’t stop
there…
Graphite came into widespread use following the discovery of a large
graphite deposit in Borrowdale, England in 1564. Appreciated for leaving a
darker mark than lead, the mineral proved so soft and brittle that it required
a holder. Originally, graphite sticks were wrapped in string. Later, the
graphite was inserted into hollowed-out wooden sticks and, thus, the wood-
cased pencil was born!
Nuremberg, Germany was the birthplace of the first mass-produced pencils
in 1662. Spurred by Faber-Castell (established in 1761), Lyra, Steadtler and
other companies, an active pencil industry developed throughout the 19th
century industrial revolution.
Pencil History: America Expresses Itself
Early settlers depended on pencils from overseas until the war with England
cut off imports. William Monroe, a Concord, Massachusetts cabinet-maker,
is credited with making America’s first wood pencils in 1812. Another
Concord native, famous author Henry David Thoreau, was also renowned
for his pencil-making prowess.
Click here to learn more about famous pencil people through history.
The American pencil industry took off when The Joseph Dixon Crucible
Company (now Dixon Ticonderoga) and more pencil manufacturers started
getting into the act and, towards the end of the 19th century, New York and
New Jersey hosted several factories established by prominent German
pencil manufacturers, including Faber-Castell, Eberhard Faber, Eagle Pencil
Company (later Berol) and General Pencil Company.
high-quality wood casings. But, by the 1890s, many pencil manufacturers
started painting pencils and imprinting them with brand names. There’s an
interesting story behind how the familiar yellow pencil came to be.
Click here to find out why pencils are yellow.
Pencil History: Following the Wood
Early American pencils were made from Eastern Red Cedar, a strong,
splinter-resistant wood that grew in Tennessee and other parts of the
Southeastern United States. To be nearer to the source, Northern
manufacturers migrated south and set up wood mills until, eventually, the
greatest concentration of U.S. pencil manufacturers had established
factories in Tennessee. To this day, U.S. producers are primarily
concentrated in the South.
By the early 1900s, however, additional sources of wood were needed.
Pencil manufacturers turned to California’s Sierra Nevada mountains,
where they found Incense-cedar, a species that grew in abundance and made
superior pencils. California Incense-cedar soon became the wood of choice
for domestic and international pencil makers around the world.
To ensure the continued availability of Incense-cedar, forest workers have
carefully managed the stands of trees, and timber companies have
committed to harvesting Incense-cedar on a sustained-yield basis.
“Sustained-yield” means that the annual growth of the forest is greater than
the amount harvested from the forest. Forests managed on a sustained-yield
basis are abundant and healthy, and will continue to provide wood for
people and habitats for animals for generations to come.
Learn more about Pencils.com’s Top selling Incense-cedar pencils, HERE.
Pencil History: A Global Industry
The history of the pencil industry includes a great number of important
companies and brands from around the world. Many now have factories
globally. Factors contributing to the challenging impact of globalization,
resulting in a great shift of pencil production increasingly being
concentrated in Asia over the past 20 years, include:
• The reduction of trade barriers
• The introduction of containerized shipments of goods overseas
• The comparative differences in raw material costs between countries
and the lower cost of transporting people and information around the world.
“The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘the
children are now working as if I did not exist. “ ~Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori (1870 – 1952). Maria Montessori was the first woman
in Italy to qualify as a physician. She developed an interest in the diseases
of children and in the needs of those said to be ‘uneducable’ In the case of
the latter she argued for the development of training for teachers along
Froebelian lines (she also drew on Rousseau and Pestalozzi) and developed
the principle that was also to inform her general educational
programme: first the education of the senses, then the education of the
intellect. Maria Montessori developed a teaching programme that enabled
‘defective’ children to read and write. She sought to teach skills not by
having children repeatedly try it, but by developing exercises that prepare
them. These exercises would then be repeated: Looking becomes reading;
touching becomes writing.
Brief Biography
Bottom of Form
Born: August 31, 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy.
Died: May 6, 1952 in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.
Early Adulthood:
An extraordinarily gifted person with the scholarly bent of a Madame Curie
and the compassionate soul of a Mother Teresa, Maria Montessori was
always ahead of her time.
She became Italy’s first female doctor when she graduated in 1896. Initially
she took care of children’s bodies and their physical ailments and diseases.
Then her natural intellectual curiosity led to an exploration of children’s
minds and how they learn. She believed that environment was a major
factor in child development.
Professional Life:
Appointed Professor of Anthropology at the University of Rome in 1904,
Montessori represented Italy at two international women’s conferences:
Berlin in 1896 and London in 1900. She amazed the world of education
with her glass house classroom at the Panama-Pacific International
Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915. In 1922 she was appointed Inspector
of Schools in Italy. She lost that position when she refused to have her
young charges take the fascist oath as the dictator Mussolini required.
Travels to America:
Dr. Montessori visited the U.S. in 1913 and impressed Alexander Graham
Bell who founded the Montessori Education Association in his Washington,
D.C. home. Her American friends included Helen Keller and Thomas
Edison. In 1915 she mounted an exhibit at the Panama-Pacific International
Exhibition in San Francisco. It featured a glass class room which allowed
people to observe her teaching methods. She also conducted training
sessions and addressed the NEA and the International Kindergarten Union.
Training Her Followers:
Dr. Montessori was a teacher of teachers. She wrote and lectured
unceasingly. She opened a research institute in Spain in 1917 and conducted
training courses in London in 1919. She founded training centres in the
Netherlands in 1938 and taught her methodology in India in 1939. She
established centres in The Netherlands (1938) and England (1947). An
ardent pacifist, Dr. Montessori escaped harm during the turbulent ’20′s and
’30′s by advancing her educational mission in the face of hostilities.
Honours:
Dr. Montessori’s work garnered her Nobel Peace Prize nominations in
1949, 1950 and 1951.
Educational Philosophy:
Maria Montessori was profoundly influenced by Fredrich Froebel, the
inventor of kindergarten, and by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who believed
that children learned through activity. She also drew inspiration from,
Seguin and Rousseau.
According to Montessori, the goal of education is “to be able to find
activities that are so intrinsically meaningful that we want to throw
ourselves into them” confirmed this assertion by noting that “when children
find tasks that enable them to develop their naturally emerging capacities,
they become interested in them and concentrate deeply on them. They
possess a serenity that seems to come from the knowledge that they have
been able to develop something vital from within.”
Dr. Maria Montessori initially devised her teaching philosophy in 1896
while working with special needs children in the Psychiatric Department at
the University of Rome. Although her patients were diagnosed as mentally
deficient and unable to learn, within two years of Montessori’s instruction,
the children were able to successfully complete Italy’s standardized public
school exams.
The Montessori Method was a radical philosophy at the time which
contradicted and challenged many of the existing beliefs about ‘whole-class
learning’ the acquisition of knowledge and the development of early human
cognition. Montessori believed that children were not a blank slate and that
the traditional learning methods such as recitation, memorization and
conditioning failed to develop necessary life skills and individual
abilities. She described traditional students as, “butterflies mounted on
pins, each fastened to their place spreading the useless wings of barren and
meaningless knowledge which they have acquired”.
Through her research and study in the field, Montessori observed that
effective teaching styles required the establishment of a “sensory rich”
environment that offered interactive yet independent learning
opportunities. In this “educational playground” children could choose from
a variety of developmental activities that promoted learning by
doing. Montessori believed that it was necessary to train the senses before
training the mind.
By using this “self-directed” individual learning approach, Montessori’s
students were able to teach themselves through critical interaction in a
‘prepared environment’ containing interconnected tasks which gradually
required higher levels of cognitive thought. This method was designed to
create a task-oriented student who is “intrinsically motivated to master
challenging tasks”.
According to Montessori, from ages 2-6 children experience a “sensitive
period” in which vital skills such as language acquisition, socialization and,
kinesiology need to be identified and strategically applied and
advanced. Any deficiency in intellect, ethics or socialization later in life
can be attributed to a lack of cognitive development during the “sensitive
period”.
History of Braille
Braille History – French Military Combat Code Evolves to Bring Literacy
and Independence to Millions
What is Braille?
Braille is a system of touch reading and writing for blind persons in which rational sequence of signs devised for the fingertips, rather than imitating
raised dots represent the letters of the alphabet. Braille also contains signs devised for the eyes.
equivalents for punctuation marks and provides symbols to show letter
Charles Barbier’s “Night-Writing”
groupings.
The history of braille goes all the way back to the early 1800’s. A man
Braille is read by moving the hand or hands from left to right along each
named Charles Barbier who served in Napoleon Bonaparte’s French army
line. Both hands are usually involved in the reading process, and reading is
developed a unique system known as “night writing” so soldiers could
generally done with the index fingers. The average reading speed is about
communicate safely during the night. Being a military veteran, Barbier had
125 words per minute, but greater speeds of up to 200 words per minute are
seen several soldiers killed because they used lamps after dark to read
possible.
combat messages. The light shining from the lamps told enemy combatants

By using the braille alphabet, people who are blind can review and study where the French soldiers were and inevitably led to the loss of many men.

the written word. They can also become aware of different written
conventions such as spelling, punctuation, paragraphing and footnotes.
Charles Barbier’s Sonography Table, also known as “Night Writing”. Photo
source: ParisLessTraveled.WordPress.com
Most of all, braille gives blind individuals access to a wide range of reading
Barbier based his “night writing” system on a raised 12-dot cell; two dots
materials including recreational and educational reading, financial
wide and six dots tall. Each dot or combination of dots within the cell
statements and restaurant menus. Equally important are contracts,
represented a letter or a phonetic sound. The problem with the military code
regulations, insurance policies, directories and cookbooks that are all part of
was that the human fingertip could not feel all the dots with one touch.
daily adult life. Through braille, people who are blind can also pursue
hobbies and cultural enrichment with materials such as music scores, Enter Louis Braille
hymnals, playing cards, and board games.
Louis Braille was born in the village of Coupvray, France on January 4,
Various other methods had been attempted over the years to enable reading 1809. He was blinded at a very young age after he accidentally stabbed
for the blind; many of them raised versions of print letters. It is generally himself in the eye with his father’s awl. Braille’s father was a leather-
accepted that the braille system has succeeded because it is based on a worker and used the awl to poke holes in the leather goods he produced.

At eleven years old, Braille was inspired to modify Charles Barbier’s “night
writing” code in an effort to create an efficient written communication
system for fellow blind individuals. One year earlier he was enrolled at the
National Institute of the Blind in Paris and spent the better part of the next
nine years developing and refining the system of raised dots that has come
to be known by his name, Braille.
After all of Braille’s work, the code was now based on cells with only 6-
dots instead of 12 (like the example shown below). This improvement was
crucial because it meant that a fingertip could encompass the entire cell unit
with one impression and move rapidly from one cell to the next. Over time,
braille gradually came to be accepted throughout the world as the
fundamental form of written communication for blind individuals, and
today it remains basically as he invented it.
However, there have been some small modifications to the braille system,
particularly the addition of contractions representing groups of letters or
whole words that appear frequently in a language. The use of contractions
permits faster braille reading and helps reduce the size of braille books,
making them much less cumbersome.
Braille passed away in 1853 at the age of 43, a year before his home
country of France adopted braille as its’ official communication system for
blind individuals. A few years later in 1860, braille made its way “across
the pond” to America where it was adopted by The Missouri School for the
Blind in St. Louis.
Legacy of Braille Benefits Millions
 Fröbel also developed a series of occupations such as sewing, weaving and
Louis Braille’s legacy has enlightened the lives of millions of people who
the modelling with clay, for children to reconstruct their experiences
are blind. Blind individuals from all over the world benefit from Braille’s through play.
work daily. Today, braille code is transcribed in many different languages Ottilie de Liagre in a letter to Fröbel in 1844 observed that playing with the
Froebel gifts empowers children to be lively and free, but people can
worldwide. Louis would be very proud to know his creation has given
degrade it into a mechanical routine.
literacy to countless numbers of people over the decades. Now people who
are blind can enjoy all the printed-word has to offer just like everyone else.
The effect is tremendously empowering and helps them achieve success in
school and in their careers.

Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel or Froebel ( listen (help·info))

(German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈaʊɡʊst ˈfʁøːbəl]; 21 April 1782 – 21 June
1852) was a German pedagogue, a student of Pestalozzi who laid the
foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children
have unique needs and capabilities. He created the concept of the
"kindergarten" and also coined the word now used in German and English.
He also developed the educational toys known as Froebel Gifts.

The Froebel gifts (German: Fröbelgaben) are play materials for young
children designed by Friedrich Fröbel for the original Kindergarten at Bad
Blankenburg. Playing with Froebel gifts, singing, dancing and growing
plants were each important aspects of this child-centered approach to
education created by Friedrich Fröbel.
The Sonntagsblatt (1838-1840) published by Fröbel explained the meaning,
and described the use of each of his five play gifts (Spielgabe):
"The active and creative, living and life producing being of each person,
reveals itself in the creative instinct of the child. All human education is
bound up in the quiet and conscientious nurture of this instinct of activity;
and in the ability of the child, true to this instinct, to be active."[1]
Between May 1837 and 1850, the Froebel gifts were made in Bad
Blankenburg in the Principality of Schwarzburg Rudolstadt, by master
carpenter Löhn, assisted by artisans and women of the village.[2]