When akin to the typical issue: What arrived initial: the chicken or the egg? The question of what arrived very first among the pencil and the pen is not so substantially a philosophical physiological evolutionary a person, instead it is a purely historic 1. But with no the historical knowledge to hand, most would be stumped to come up with an assertive reply. The answer is similar to that of another common dilemma: which came initial, the lighter or matches? And like this issue most give the wrong solution in reply.
Despite seeming like a much more present day piece of technological know-how the lighter was in reality designed right before matches, and so you can deduce that it was the pen that was in fact invented just before the pencil.
The Pen
Since cavemen begun doodling buffalo on the walls of their caves with mud and their fingers, man has been destined to invent the pen. As long in the past as 4000BC individuals started off utilizing crude pens manufactured from straws or feathers dipped in liquid and have been in use, in some shape or variety, correct up until finally the 1800’s when the initial steel tipped pens and fountain pens had been invented. The modern biro was invented by Mr Bíró from Hungary 1938.
The Pencil
It was the historical Greeks and Romans who to start with used direct to mark strains for individuals to compose on with pens and the middles ages (1500’s) noticed folks use direct or silver sticks to make markings on papyrus (historic model of paper). But it was the discovery of graphite in the late 1700’s that released the pencil as we know it. Of training course it was a chemist, a Frenchman named Conte, who came up with the correct mixture of graphite and clay that was just suitable for writing and it was an American named William Monroe, a cabinet maker in the 1800’s, who utilised his woodwork techniques to invent a way to cut wood correctly more than enough to produce anything pretty near to the contemporary pencil.
You would think that with the emergence of computers and computer add-ons this sort of as the mouse, electronic mail and factors like contact display technologies that it would only be a matter of time in advance of pens and pencils turn into obsolete. Just after all, a extensive volume of ink these times goes into inkjet cartridges for printers.
But whilst 1 half of modern society is forging forward with their electronic age, the other fifty percent are correctly happy utilizing pens, pencils and paper for all their communications. Could they even be the greatest creation at any time? Wherever would we be without them?