The HB Pencil

Ever wondered what the letters HB mean on a pencil?  H is for Hard and B is for Black.  By varying the mix of clay with graphite, pencils are made harder or softer.  This is known as the Conte Process after Nicolas-Jacques Conte who developed this technique in 1795.
Early pencils were graded by numbers, 1 to 4 (hard to soft).  During the nineteenth century letters were used instead of numbers, which is when H and B began.  The more letters, the more extreme the grade, ie. BBB for very soft and HHH for very hard.  However, in the early years of the twentieth century, a new grading system was introduced which is the one still used today, from 9H to 9B.  At this time, the letter F was also added for a fine point pencil.  In this European grading, F falls between H and HB.
The Americans, though, have a different grading system, using numbers. Their 1 is equivalent to our B, 2 is HB, 2 and a half is F, 3 is H, and 4 is 2H.  Now I know what kind of pencil Leo Bloom is talking about in the musical film of The Producers.  In the song I Wanna Be a Producer, Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom says "Here's my visor...my Dixon Ticonderoga number two pencil...and my big finish!"  This yellow HB pencil is the most famous of all the Dixon Ticonderoga models.

The earliest known use of the word pencil spelt pinsel, was in 1325 and meant an artist's paintbrush.  Chaucer used it in his Canterbury Tales circa 1385 as pencel.  It is thought to have come from the Old French pincel or peincel meaning paintbrush.  But the first recorded use of pencil, meaning a writing implement made from graphite, was in 1612, some 180 years before Conte developed his process.

Let me leave you with a poem from the great Spike Milligan:

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll do a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B.

Sources:
Chambers Dictionary of Etymology (1988), Chambers.
Martin, Doug (1997) Pencil Hardness/Softness Ratings or Grading Pencils, [online]. Available from:  http://www.pencilpages.com/articles/grades.htm (Accessed 10th January 2011).
Milligan, Spike (1999) A Children's Treasury of Milligan Classic Stories and Poems, London, Virgin (the poem quoted above is on page 140).


Juliana