> because of this prevailing thought that the pencil was known as the lead pencil, a name that has endured until today
Wait, so we didn't realise graphite and lead were different substances until after pencils were invented? Yet we never took that mix-up to the point of putting lead in pencils?
It didn't make any sense to me either. I found this article[1] which frames it a little more clearly: it's not that they thought graphite and lead were the exact same thing, it's that they thought graphite was just a particular type of lead that was useful for drawing when first discovered.
Wait, so we didn't realise graphite and lead were different substances until after pencils were invented? Yet we never took that mix-up to the point of putting lead in pencils?