The pencil eraser was patented in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by Hymen Lipman, a Jewish immigrant from Kingston, Jamiaca, on this day in history, March 30, 1858.

Well, no, I’m slightly incorrect with the last sentence, it hasn’t become a pencil with no eraser, it has always been a pencil with no eraser.

Believe it or not, this is not the first time in history that a little stick of graphite has made or broken men’s fortunes. The humble pencil’s history has been peppered with quite a few interesting ...

Lipman's design for the attached eraser was significantly smaller than erasers found on pencils in use today (the gold-standard, of course, being the Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil).