Pencil
a name applied to instruments for writing, drawing, or painting, differing as much in their construction as in the use to which they are applied.
There are now in use the following kinds of pencils: Hair pencils, black lead pencils, chalk pencils, and slate pencils. The first are used for painting or writing with fluid colors, either oil or water, and in China and Japan are employed almost entirely instead of pens for writing; the color used being the black or brown pigment obtained from various species of sepia or cuttle fish. The wellknown black lead pencil is made by cutting black lead or plumbago. Some pencils are filled with colored chalk instead of black lead. are The ever-pointed pencil is an instrument for using cylindrical pieces of black lead, which are forced forward in the pencil just so far as to allow them to be used without breaking. The pencils for using liquid colors or paints made of hog's bristles, camel's hair, fitch, sable, etc. Those of a large and common kind are described under BRUSH (q. v.). The soft pencils for artists are made as follows: The tail of the animal (sable, badger, marten, etc.) is scoured in a solution of alum; then steeped for several hours in lukewarm water; then dried in linen cloths; and finally combed out regularly. The hairs are seized with pincers, and cut off near the skin, and the little parcels of hair are sorted into groups according to their length. A few hairs are then taken enough for one pencil-and placed in a little receptacle, which holds them while a thread is bound round near the roots. The base of the pencil is then trimmed flat by scissors.
The hairs thus prepared are fitted either into quills or into tin tubes. The quills are those of swans, geese, ducks, lapwings, pigeons, or larks, according to the size of the pencil. Each quill is softened and swelled in hot water; and the bunch of hairs is introduced at the larger end, and pulled forward by a simple apparatus to the smaller end, where the shrinking of the quill binds the hairs closely. Women are generally more successful than men in preparing the small and delicate pencils. Slate pencils, for writing on slate, are made either by cutting slate into thin sticks, and rounding them. or by cutting it into fine square penc PENDANT slips, and incasing them in wood, as in the case of black lead, etc.
In optics, an aggregate or collection of rays of light which converge to, or diverge from, the same point.