Who Invented the Pencil? ✏️ | The Scrapbook Crew | Pencil Song for Kids

Look! A giant pencil is drawing all by itself... but what is that grey line made of? Pip, Snip and Old Tuk find out that pencil "lead" has no lead in it at all! Snip snips a pencil in half and finds graphite inside, which is made of carbon, just like diamonds. Long ago, in the green hills of England, people found a very pure graphite, and the shepherds used it to mark their sheep (and one sheep marks Snip right back!). Then people wrapped graphite in string, put it inside wood, and an inventor in France mixed it with clay to make light and dark lines. And before erasers? People rubbed out pencil marks with bread! Old Tuk says he marked one hundred sheep (or did he read about it?). Then everyone sings "Not Lead at All!" In this episode kids learn: • the grey part of a pencil is graphite, not lead • graphite is made of carbon, just like diamonds • shepherds in England used graphite to mark their sheep • the first pencils were graphite wrapped in string, then in wood • graphite mixed with clay makes lighter or darker pencils • before erasers, people used bread to rub out pencil marks • the pencil was made better by many people, one step at a time Chapters 0:00 A pencil drawing by itself! 0:13 What's inside a pencil? 0:52 The shepherds' stone 1:18 Sticks and string 1:34 Graphite and clay 1:59 Rubbing it out with bread 2:29 Tuk's hundred sheep 2:46 Song: Not Lead at All! 4:09 What did we learn? Facts checked with: British Library — The history of the pencil Tate — Art term: Graphite Cumbria County History Trust — The Seathwaite Plumbago Mine University of Waterloo Earth Sciences Museum — Graphite NPR / GBH — Trace the remarkable history of the humble pencil US Patent 19,783 (1858) — Combination of lead-pencil and eraser The Scrapbook Crew is a hand-made paper cut-out cartoon. Every episode is researched, written and directed by a real person; the characters and voices are storytelling tools.