In some parts of the US, students have already returned to the classroom, while others are frantically squeezing the last drops of freedom from summer break as they prepare to start a new school year. One school supply that unites most students is the classic, yellow-coated, No. 2 pencil. For centuries, the pencil was a tool so vital that many would use theirs until only a tiny stub remained. An entire market for various pencil accoutrements existed in the 18th and 19th centuries, including a pencil grip called an ‘extender’ that allowed you to use the last bit of a pencil so as not to waste what was, at the time, a precious commodity. Think of it in terms of all the things you buy to enhance your mobile phone or tablet, and then imagine that the pencil once held equal value as a communication device. (In our hearts, it still does.)
Class, please take out a No. 2 pencil…
Today in History
More Desktop Wallpapers:
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Composite image of a lunar eclipse
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Happy 800th, Salisbury Cathedral
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Did they forget to fly south?
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Let s ride! It s Roller Coaster Day
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Atop the roof of Africa
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National Bison Day
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Siblings Day
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Castle Frankenstein in Darmstadt, Germany
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Celebrating Madagascar on its Independence Day
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Last stop before leaving the solar system
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Wind horses carry wishes for a new year
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Monarch butterflies migrate south
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Labor Day
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Can you see the family resemblance?
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Singing praises of the oceans
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Lunar eclipse
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Celebrating Minnesota’s statehood
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Christmas Tree Point Road and Twin Peaks, San Francisco
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The moth wonderful time of the year
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National Bird Day
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Women s suffrage at 100
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Travel Sunday: Flamenco in Granada, Andalusia, Spain
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A cutting-edge art gallery opens in Paris
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From Sputnik to extraterrestrial storms
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Guanahacabibes National Park, Cuba
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Replica of a Viking home in Dublin National Botanic Gardens, Ireland
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Ambassadors of the airwaves
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Busy building wetlands
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Golden jellyfish in Jellyfish Lake, Palau
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Float on