When the supply of natural graphite from Borrowdale ran short, the graphite was thinned down with other materials. It was not until 1789 that the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele proved that graphite and lead sulfide were two different minerals, and the geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner coined the name graphite, which stems from ‘gráphein’, meaning ‘to write’ or ‘to draw’ in Greek.) Hence, the words for ‘pencil’ in several languages literally mean ‘lead pen’. (Originally, the grey metallic-sheened substance was thought to be a form of lead ore. The substance was so soft and brittle that it required a holder. The wood-cased pencil was invented following the discovery of a large graphite deposit in Borrowdale, England in 1564. (This answer is partly based on product information from Faber-Castell thus, it may not be without bias.) Animators in particular enjoy using 10B over animator paper because it writes like butter, creating nice, quick, heavy lines with no friction. They're perfect for pencil drawings as artists can take advantage of the brush-like expressions, especially in the higher B grades. They smudge easily, but are readily erased. On the downside, hard leads tend to be scratchy, especially as you move up the scale.ī leads are smooth to write and draw with. Left-handed pencil users can also take advantage of smudge-resistant H leads. H leads are extremely smudge-resistant and give cleaner lines, making them useful for things such as outlines, technical drawings, light sketches, and even watercolors. This site has some great guidance on what the benefits of each are: This is also explained in the Wikipedia article linked above, which notes that on some scales, the US equivalent of HB is a #2 pencil, while other manufacturers use the equivalent HB=2½.Īs a general explanation of the differences between the grades, shows the following image:Īs you can see in the image, the higher the H value, the lighter the result but the finer the point, while at the other end, the higher the B value, the darker the blackness of the graphite and wider the point. though, according to this site, there's no "industry standard" so one company's HB may not be the same as another's. though, the source of the lettering seems to be debatable according to Wikipedia - H stands for " Hardtmuth" (the surname of the owner of an art supply company) and B stands for "Budweis", the town the pencil company was relocated to but "hard" and "black" are probably more useful to remember.Ī "number 2 pencil" as we (in the US) are often told to use for filling out multiple choice answers on Scantron sheets, is right in the middle, the equivalent of "HB". "H" stands for "hard" and "B" stands for "black" with "F" right in the middle between HB and H. H and B relate to the hardness or softness of the pencil's graphite.
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