Forty Centuries of Ink / Or, A chronological narrative concerning ink and its backgrounds, introducing incidental observations and deductions, parallels of time and color phenomena, bibliography, chemistry, poetical effusions, citations, anecdotes and curiosa together with some evidence respecting the evanescent character of most inks of to-day and an epitome of chemico-legal ink.

by David Nunes Carvalho

The ancients drew lines and letters with wooden styles, and afterward an alloy of lead and tin was used. Pliny refers to the use of lead for ruling lines on papyrus. La Moine cites a document of 1387 ruled with graphite. Slips of graphite in wooden sticks (pencils) are mentioned by Gesner, of Zurich, in 1565; he credits England with the production. They are doubtless the product of the Borrowdale mine, then lately discovered. In the early part of the seventeenth century black-lead pencils are distinctly described by several writers. They are noticed by Ambrosinus, 1648; spoken of by Pettus, in 1683, as inclosed in fir or cedar.

Red and black chalk pencils were used in Germany in 1450; in fact, fragments of chalk, charcoal, and shaped sticks of colored minerals had been in use since times previous to all historic mention.

When Cortez landed in Mexico, in 1520, he found the Aztecs using graphite crayons, which were probably made from a mineral found in Sonora.

The firm of A. W. Faber are the largest manufacturers of lead pencils in the world. They have compiled a history of this implement of handwriting which they have permitted me to use in the story which follows.

The lead pencil is an invention of modern times, and its introduction may deservedly be ranked with the large number of technical innovations in which more especially the last three centuries have been so rich; nor can it be denied that pencils have played an important part in the diffusion of arts and sciences and in facilitating study and intellectual intercourse.

To the classic ages and their art the pencil, and in general every application of lead as a writing material, was entirely unknown, and it was not till the advent of the middle ages that it began to be used for this purpose. This lead, i. e. metallic lead, however, was in no way equivalent to the graphite or black-lead of our pencils, which are only honored with the prefix of "lead," owing to the leaden color of the writing done with them.

Moreover, in those days, lead was used exclusively for ruling and in no way for writing or drawing; it was employed in the form of round, sharp-edged discs, similar to those which, it is said, were already used for the same purpose in ancient classic times. It is only with the development and growth of modern painting that traces of pencil-like drawings first begin to be met. At so early a period even as the fourteenth century, mention is made by the masters of that time, more especially by the brothers Van Eyck, and again in the fifteenth century by Menlink and others, of studies or compositions which were made with an instrument similar to a lead pencil, upon a paper with chalk prepared surface.

This type of drawing was commonly classed as "silver- style," a term, however, which was no doubt erroneous, as there could be no question of the use of pure silver in this connection.

In the same way it is also reported of the later mediaeval Italian artists that they drew their subjects in "silver-style," upon planished fig-tree wood, the surface of which had been prepared with the powder obtained from calcined bones,—a method, however, which seems only to have been employed in exceptional instances.

But in the fourteenth century, drawings were frequently done in Italy with pencils consisting of a mixture cast from lead and tin; these drawings could easily be erased with bread crumbs.