• English and German pencils were not handy to the French during the Personalized Pencils Napoleonic wars

• It took the efforts of an officer in Napoleon's army to contraction this
• In 1795 Nicholas Jacques Conté discovered a method of mixing powdered graphite with clay and factor the alloy into rods that were then fired in a kiln
• By varying the ratio of graphite to clay, the hardness of the graphite rod could also be varied
• This method of manufacture which had been earlier discovered by the Austrian Joseph Hardtmuth of Koh-I-Noor in 1790 remains in use.

Pencils graded using this philosophy are used to measure the hardness and resistance of varnishes and paints. The resistance of a coating (also admitted as its pencil hardness) is determined as the grade of the hardest pencil that does not mark the coating when pressed firmly against it at a 45 gauge angle.