In 1770, Sir Joseph Priestley (the discoverer of oxygen) noted “I have seen a substance excellently adapted to the purpose of wiping from paper the mark of black lead pencil”. Europeans were rubbing out pencil marks with small cubes of rubber. The first patent for attaching an eraser to a pencil was issued in 1858 to a man from Philadelphia named Hyman Lipman. This patent was later held to be invalid because it was merely the combination of two things, without a new use!
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