The core of a pencil does not contain lead and never has. Pencils contain a form of solid carbon known as graphite. According to the book The Pencil by Henry Petroski, the graphite pencil was first developed and popularized in the 1600's. The first users of graphite simply dug this mineral out of the hills and discovered it could be sawed into sticks and used as an excellent writing tool. During the 1600's, no one knew the chemical nature of this material, as chemistry itself was still in its infancy. Since this writing material behaved similar to metallic lead, but had a darker color, people began calling it "black lead". Eventually, the name of the core of the pencil got shortened to "lead". In 1779, German chemist K. W. Scheele finally determined pencil lead to be composed of pure carbon. A decade later, A. G. Werner decided that this carbon material needed a new name and proposed the name "graphite" based on the Greek word "graphein" which means "to write". Black-core pencils currently contain and have always contained graphite, not lead.