from the Dahl-y telegraph

DID YOU YOU KNOW?

Roald Dahl always wrote his stories with a very particular type of pencil: the Dixon Ticonderoga 1388 2-5/10 medium, to be precise!

In Europe, people have been using pencils since the 1600s. If they made a mistake however, the best thing they could use was - get this! - a piece of bread! That’s not a sandwich we’d want to eat!

Then, in 1774, scientists became very excited about a new discovery called Caoutchouc (bless you!!). Some bright-spark suggested that a lump of the stuff was just what people needed to rub away words and marks made by pencils. After some trial and error, hey presto, the rubber was born, and there was no excuse for messy schoolwork ever again!