After papermill was invented, paper becomes common in Europe in the 1400s. people have been using quill pen to write. But quil pen and animal feathers will only last about a week, and these pens needs a very lengthy preparation time.
In 1560 Graphite was first mined from the hamlet of Seathwaite near Borrowdale parish, Cumbria, England. The local that time make used of these graphite to mark sheeps. These material was prove to be too soft for rocks and too hard to be earth, was judged by the Royal Society to be similar to white lead. and hence named as Black lead. These pure solid form of graphite could be easily sawn into sticks. 1584 Giovanni Lomazzo’s16c treatise on art and architecture recommended it to be use as a drawing material. And artists actaully adopted black lead well.
Black lead/ graphite used as a chuck/ stick were wrapped in strings or bound into wooden case for easy handling. inital metal lead holder was replaced by gluing black lead into wood cases by the end of 17C. In 1662 Friedrich Staedtler, a carpenter in Nuremberg invented the first modern pencil. He cit black lead into a square and glued it inside two halves of wood.
Wood casing of different shapes and sizes were employed over th years. Namely squares, rectangle, circle, hexagon.