Inside the Factory: Pencils

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Technology Documentary hosted by Gregg Wallace and Ruth Goodman and Cherry Healey, published by BBC in 2019 - English narration

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Inside the Factory: Pencils Gregg Wallace is in Germany, at a historic factory which produces 600,000 pencils a day. At materials intake he is astonished that the main material in a pencil is not lead, but graphite. He helps mix this with clay to produce a 250-kilo batch – enough for 200,000 pencils. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is at Manchester University examining the astonishing properties of graphite. She discovers that this highly conductive form of carbon is also able to withstand temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Celsius. Historian Ruth Goodman is on the trail of the very earliest pencils in the Lake District. It is a story which begins in the 15th century with the discovery of a huge deposit of pure graphite in the Borrowdale valley. Carved into sticks and wrapped in string, it made a brilliant writing tool. Ruth is also wondering if, in this modern digital age, the pencil is outdated technology. But she finds documents that show the death of handwriting has been prematurely announced on many occasions, dating right back to the invention of the printing press.