Hymen Lipman patents the first pencil with a built-in eraser - March 30th, 1858

On this day in 1858, Jamaican-born inventor Hymen Lipman registered the first patent for a pencil with a built-in eraser.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to this Day in History Class, a
show for those interested in the big and small moments
of history. I'm Gabelusier, and today we're celebrating National Pencil

(00:24):
Day by looking at the story of Hymen Lippman, the
first person to combine a pencil with an eraser. The
day was March thirtieth, eighteen fifty eight. Jamaican born inventor
Himan Lippman registered the first patent for a pencil with

(00:47):
a built in a racer. Lippman described his invention as
a quote combination of lead and India rubber or other
erasing substance embedded in the holder of a drawing pencil.
That sounds straightforward enough, but Lippman's design was actually quite
different from the erasers found on modern pencils. Instead of

(01:08):
being attached to one end by a metal band, Lippman's
eraser was enclosed within the body of the pencil, just
like the lead. That way, you could sharpen one end
to expose the pencil lead and the other end to
expose the eraser. As you might imagine, that setup resulted
in a rather slim eraser, sort of like the ones

(01:29):
you see on mechanical pencils today. It still got the
job done, though, enabling scribblers of all types to edit
and revise on the fly just by flipping over their pencil.
Himan L. Lippman was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on March twentieth,
eighteen seventeen. When he was about twelve years old, he

(01:50):
immigrated to the United States with his parents, both of
whom were English. The family eventually settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
where Lippman developed an interest in stationery and book binding.
In eighteen forty, he took over the shop of the
city's leading stationer, Samuel M. Stewart. In addition to binding

(02:10):
books and selling office supplies, Lippmann also became America's first
envelope manufacturer. He didn't just produce envelopes either, He actually
improved the base design by adding adhesive to the back
flap so it could be sealed more easily. Later in life,
Lippmann also made several other novel additions to nineteenth century

(02:31):
office supplies. For example, he invented a method for binding
papers that was sort of like the forerunner of the stapler,
and in eighteen seventy three, he became the first person
in the United States to produce and sell blank postcards.
That product became so ubiquitous that rather than being called
a postcard, it was widely known as a Lippman card instead.

(02:55):
Still any way you slice it, Lippman's biggest claim to
fame was the patent he submitted in early eighteen fifty eight.
His combination lead pencil and a racer was in good
company that year, joining the ranks of other newly patented
products such as the can opener and the ironing board. However,
Lippmann's invention was far more versatile than your average household gadget.

(03:19):
The built in eraser could be used to correct mistakes
and make edits to a piece of writing, but it
was especially useful for quote making, mathematical, architectural, and many
other kinds of drawings in which the lines are very
near each other, as it may be sharpened to a
point to erase any marks between the lines. Lippman's built

(03:41):
in a raser functioned the same way as any other.
When rubbed across a pencil mark, it would loosen the
particles on the surface of the paper. Then the sticky
rubber in the eraser would grab and hold onto those particles,
while leaving the fibers of the paper more or less intact. Also,
it's worth noting that when you erase a pencil mark,

(04:01):
you're actually removing particles of graphite, not pencil lead. The
confusion stems from the fact that when graphite was originally discovered,
people mistakenly thought it was a form of lead and
named it accordingly. In seventeen eighty nine, the substance was
finally renamed graphite from the Greek word forward to write.
But that still hasn't stopped people from calling it pencil lead.

(04:24):
Then it probably never will. In any case, humans have
sought ways to correct errors in their writing for as
long as writing has existed, and for a long time,
balled up pieces of bread were the go to method
for erasing pencil marks. It may sound strange, but some
artists still use bread to lighten marks made with pastels

(04:45):
or charcoal. That finally began to change in seventeen seventy
when English chemist Joseph Priestley realized that the vegetable gum
produced by a certain South American tree could remove pencil
marks more effectively than bread. He named the substance rubber
because erasing graphite required a rubbing motion, though of course

(05:06):
there are all sorts of uses for rubber that don't
involve rubbing. Not long after Priestly's breakthrough, an English engineer
named Edward Nairne became the first to sell natural rubber erasers.
They weren't attached to pencils, though, and were instead a
standalone product, which he sold at the high price of
three shillings per half inch cube. Nearly a century later,

(05:31):
Hymen Lippmann finally brought it all together with his landmark patent.
He made a fortune off his creation, but not in
the way you might expect. Rather than producing the pencil
eraser combos himself, Lippman sold his patent to an entrepreneur
named Joseph Reckendorfer in eighteen sixty two. He made one

(05:51):
hundred thousand dollars from the deal, the equivalent of about
three million dollars today. Reckendorfer clearly expected to make a
great deal more money off the invention, and if things
had continued as they were, he probably would have. Unfortunately
for him, the aw Faber Pencil Company eventually sued to

(06:12):
have his patent overturned. The case went all the way
to the Supreme Court, which ultimately declared the patent invalid
in eighteen seventy five. According to the ruling, Lippmann hadn't
really invented anything, as both the pencil and the eraser
already existed, and while it was true he had been
the first to join the two things together, the judges

(06:34):
felt that wasn't enough to justify a patent. Once the
patent was invalidated, other companies, including Faber, were free to
make pencils with built in erasers without paying any royalties.
As a result, by the early twentieth century, almost every
pencil produced and sold in the US was equipped with
its own eraser. That remains the case today, with most

(06:58):
pencil erasers taking the famil your form of a rubber
tip attached by a metal band known as a fair rule.
In that way, even though his patent was ultimately erased,
Hyman's bright idea lives on. However, you might be hard
pressed to find a rubber tipped pencil in many countries
outside the US. For all of its convenience, the design

(07:21):
failed to catch on in some parts of the world,
including throughout Europe, where separate erasers still reigned supreme. The
jury still out on whether or not eraser preferences say
something about the people who wield them, but some armchair
sociologists have suggested that they do. For example, a writer
for a nineteen twenty two issue of American Stationer magazine

(07:44):
theorized that quote, it may be that foreigners consider themselves
less apt to make mistakes than the happy, go lucky Americans. Personally,
I wouldn't go so far as ascribing a superiority complex
to all foreigners, but maybe there is some truth to
the writer's idea. If nothing else, it seems plausible that

(08:05):
having an ever present eraser might cause you to be
a little more careless with your pencil, as any mistake
you made could always be easily corrected. And by the
same token, if your pencil doesn't have an eraser, you
might be inclined to consider each mark you make more carefully.
That said, there is something comforting and even liberating about

(08:27):
having a built in a racer. In nineteen fifteen, when
the innovation was still relatively new, a reverend named Silas
Delmar Conger touched upon that sense of freedom in one
of his sermons. He praised the pencil eraser as a
symbol of American resilience, saying quote, to keep our past
failures ever before us would cause us to continue to fail.

(08:50):
So take out your pencil, rub out the mark, and
start over again. I'm Gabelusier, and hopefully you now know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
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(09:13):
And if you have any comments or suggestions, you can
always send them my way by writing to this Day
at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing
the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see
you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class.