Strike the loud Earth breathless

  

'The value of graphite would soon be realised to be enormous, mainly because it could be used to line the moulds for cannonballs; the mines were taken over by the Crown and were guarded.  

When sufficient stores of graphite had been accumulated, the mines were flooded to prevent theft until more was required." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil 

"Around 1560,[19] an Italian couple named Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti made what are likely the first blueprints for the modern, wood-encased carpentry pencil. Their version was a flat, oval, more compact type of pencil. Their concept involved the hollowing out of a stick of juniper wood. Shortly thereafter, a superior technique was discovered: two wooden halves were carved, a graphite stick inserted, and the halves then glued together—essentially the same method in use to this day."

Graphite powder and clay

"The first attempt to manufacture graphite sticks from powdered graphite was in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1662. It used a mixture of graphite, sulphur, and antimony.

English and German pencils were not available to the French during the Napoleonic Wars; France, under naval blockade imposed by Great Britain, was unable to import the pure graphite sticks from the British Grey Knotts mines – the only known source in the world. " 

 

"According to Henry Petroski, transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau discovered how to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite using clay as the binder; this invention was prompted by his father's pencil factory in Concord, which employed graphite found in New Hampshire in 1821 by Charles Dunbar." 

"By the end of the nineteenth century, over 240,000 pencils were used each day in the US. The favoured timber for pencils was Red Cedar as it was aromatic and did not splinter when sharpened.  

In the early twentieth century supplies of Red Cedar were dwindling so that pencil manufacturers were forced to recycle the wood from cedar fences and barns to maintain supply.

One effect of this was that "during World War II rotary pencil sharpeners were outlawed in Britain  

because they wasted so much scarce lead and wood, and pencils had to be sharpened in the more conservative manner – with knives." 

* 

"The pen is mightier than the sword"  

is an expression indicating that the written word is more effective than violence as a means of social or political change.  

This sentiment has been expressed with metaphorical contrasts of writing implements and weapons for thousands of years.  

The specific wording that "the pen is mightier than the sword" was first used by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pen_is_mightier_than_the_sword

 

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great

The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold

The arch-enchanters wand!— itself a nothing!—

But taking sorcery from the master-hand

To paralyse the Cæsars—and to strike

The loud earth breathless!—Take away the sword—

States can be saved without it!" 

* 

Earliest sources

edit

Assyrian sage Ahiqar, who reputedly lived during the early 7th century BCE, coined the first known version of this phrase. One copy of the Teachings of Ahiqar, dating to about 500 BCE, states, 

 "The word is mightier than the sword."

According to the website Trivia Library, the book The People's Almanac provides another very early example from Greek playwright Euripides, who died c. 406 BCE. He is supposed to have written: 

 "The tongue is mightier than the blade." 

"The Islamic prophet Muhammad is quoted, in a saying narrated by 'Abdullah ibn Amr:  

"There will be a tribulation that will wipe out the Arabs in which those killed on both sides are in the Hellfire. 

 In that time the spoken word will be stronger than the sword"  

In contrast, Abu Tammam's Ode on the Conquest of Amorium poem intro:  

"The sword is the truest news . In its sharpness, the boundary between seriousness and play"  

The analogy would appear in again in 1582, in George Whetstone's An Heptameron of Civil Discourses:  

"The dashe of a Pen, is more greeuous than the counterbuse of a Launce."  

(be merely a spurious  

quotation/munition)

William Shakespeare in 1600, in his play Hamlet Act 2, scene II, wrote:  

"... many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills." 

 

Robert Burton, in 1621, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, stated:  

"It is an old saying, ' 

A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword':  

and many men are as much galled with a calumny, a scurrilous and bitter jest,  

a libel, a pasquil, satire, apologue, 

 epigram, stage-play or the like,.

 as with any misfortune whatsoever." 

 After listing several historical examples he concludes: "Hinc quam sit calamus saevior ense patet",which translates as 

 "From this it is clear how much more cruel the pen may be than the sword."

"The French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), known to history for his military conquests, also left this oft-quoted remark:  

"Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets."  

He also said: 

 "There are only two powers in the world, 

 saber and mind;  

at the end,  

saber is always defeated by mind."  

* 

"The motto appears in the school room illustration on page 168 of the first edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).  

The words "pen" and "is" are suspiciously close together leading some scholars to speculate that the illustrator, True Williams, deliberately chose the narrow spacing as a subtle obscene prank."