school

School Days

School days, school days, dear old golden rule days,
Readin' and writin' and 'rithmetic,
Taught to the tune of a hickory stick.
You were my queen in calico
I was your bashful, barefoot beau.
You wrote on my slate, "I love you, so"
When we were a couple of kids.

Nothing to do, Nellie Darling;
Nothing to do you say?
Let's take a trip on Memory's ship,
Back to the bygone day.
Sail to the old village school house;
Anchor outside the school door.
Look in and see,
There's you and there's me;
A couple of kids once more

'Member the hill,
Nellie Darling?'
And the oak tree
That grew on its brow?
They've built forty storeys
Upon that old hill,
And the oak's an old chestnut now.
"Member the meadows
So green, dear;
So fragrant with clover and maize?
Into new city lots
And preferred bus'ness plots,
They've cut them up
Since those days.

DROP EVERYTHING
AND READ

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
- Groucho Marx

PENCILS

The word "pencil" comes from the Latin word "penicillium", which means "little tail," and refers to the small brush used by the Romans as a writing instrument.

Many people still refer to the modern pencil as a lead pencil even though it contains no lead. Lead was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans for marking and drawing lines. However, graphite, a form of carbon, was used following its discovery in the 1400's.

In 1564 an unusually pure deposit of graphite was discovered in Borrowdale Valley in Northern England. This graphite was so pure, it could be cut into rods and used without further treatment. The rods were wrapped with string or held in a "reusable" wooden casing.

By the 1700's, the Barrowdale depost was depleted. Pencil makers were forced to use an inferior grade of graphite. This graphite needed to pbe pulverized and mixed with a binding substance. In 1798 French Chemist Nicolas-Jacques conte discovered a formula of powdered graphite, clay resins, other chemicals. This mixture was kiln-fired and resulted in a durable pencil rod.

The War of 1812 cut off the supply of pencils to the United States from England. A cabinetmaker, William Monroe, developed a wooden pencil casing that enclosed the inferior graphite available in the United States.

Pencils are numbered to reflect the degree of hardness of the graphite rod. #1 is the softest; #4 is the hardest of the writing instruments. Artists' drawing pencils range from the softest, 8B, to the hardest, F. Drafting pencils are designated HB, the softest, to 10H, the hardest.

CRAYONS

In the late 1800's, in New York City, Edwin Binney and Harold Smith founded Binney & Smith, Inc., a company specializing in industrial colorings....the colorings used in paint and product pigments.

Later, Binney & Smith, Inc., became involved in the manufacture of slate pencils. In 1902, at the St. Louis World Exhibition, they won the gold medal for their newest product, dustless chalk. The idea for the crayons came while touring the country promoting their slate pencils and dustless chalk.

Wax crayons were available at this time, however, the were for industrial use and were big, bulky, and clumsy. Binney &I Smith used a combination of paraffin waqx and the industrial pigments to create crayons that were "kid-sized." The first, now famous, yellow and green box of eight "Crayola" crayons appeared in 1902.
"Crayola" means "oily chalk."

1949: The first box of 48 colors
1958: The classic box of 64 colors
1962: The color "flesh" was changed to "peach"
1972: Flourescent colors were added.
1993: The Big Box of 96 colors
February 6, 1996: 100 billionth Crayola produced.

GLUE

Four thousand years ago, Egyptians were assembling their furniture with glue made out of animal hides. Hide glue is still used today and is much the same as it has been for hundreds of years. Animal hides are washed to remove the dirt, soaked in lime water for many days, washed again, neutralized with acids, washed some more, heated to over 120 degrees F for several hours. This process extracts a gelatin-like substance from the hide. It is this substance that is used to make the glue.

But, the glue we all know best is Elmer's Glue. Elmer's Glue was first made by the Bordon Company, the same company that bottled milk, in 1947. It was the first consumer white glue to be introduced and marketed under the trade name "Cascorez Glue." It was packaged in a glass bottle with a "popscicle stick" attached to the side with a rubber band. It was later named "Elmer's Glue" after Elmer, the characture cow that was the partner of Elsie, The Bordon Cow, the company's symbol.

Many of the graphics on this page came from Cottonwood Designs

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