A pencil is essentially a core of something that easily rubs off onto other things surrounded in a protective cladding of something that keeps it from rubbing o

A pencil is essentially a core of something that easily rubs off onto other things surrounded in a protective cladding of something that keeps it from rubbing off onto your hands; stuff like this has existed for centuries. There is essentially only one place in the world where graphite suitable for pencils naturally exists, and this wasn't discovered until the 1500s. Making it artificially from powdered graphite was first done in 1662, and the first process that approximates modern pencil construction was done in 1795, which is probably what you're calling the invention of the pencil.