Who Invented Chalk

An article by Peter Pierce    Comments Off on Who Invented Chalk

Chalk is a porous and soft rock that is a form of limestone, and since it’s a naturally available substance no one invented it as such. The use of chalk for writing and drawing can be dated back to pre-historic times. Hence it is very difficult to find out how the chalk as we know it today, came into existence. What also remains a mystery is the fact who invented the method to form sticks of chalks, owing to lack of recorded history of that era. The method has however trickled down over the past thousands of centuries. The naturally available chalk is first grinded into a thin powder after which water and clay are added to it. The clay acts a binding agent for the mixture. It is then molded in cylinders and allowed to dry off.

Around the 19th century when the strength of classes started growing, teachers felt the need for a medium to illustrate information on the board to be visible to all students at once. This is when chalk began to be used in classrooms.

Chalks were used profusely in classrooms for a long time till the dry erase markers replaced them with the emergence of white boards. The markers used on whiteboards do away with the possibility of potential allergic reactions that chalk-dust can cause. However, there is a flipside to the use of markers as well as they contain chemicals, which might be harmful for children.