Pencil Erasers

In the history of pencils, don't forget Goodyear. Without Charles Goodyear's rubber manufacturing in 1839, removable mechanical pencil erasers would never have become mechanical pencil history. The same rubber that hits the road also hits the paper thanks to Goodyear's vulcanization of rubber. With the better rubber available, erasers became more common. In 1858 a man named Hyman Lipman developed a patent to attach erasers to pencils, another step towards mechanical pencil history. But in the history of the pencil, before Goodyear's process comes Charles Marie de la Condamine, who brought India rubber to Europe several years before Nicholas Jacques Conte's milestone in the history of lead pencil. Actually, the history of the eraser starts with lunch. In 1770 when England used bread to correct writing mistakes, English engineer Edward Naime picked up rubber instead of bread and got the idea for the first eraser. The rest is pencil history.