Before the discovery of the eraser, people did use bread and bread crumbs to erase pencil marks. Edward Nairne is credited with popularizing the use of rubber, which by his own account, was quite ...

And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: March 30th, 1858, 156 years ago today . . . the day a Philadelphia inventor made his mark. For that was the day Hyman Lipman patented the first pencil ...

Philadelphia inventor Hymen L. Lipman rushed heroically to the aid of mistake-prone schoolchildren, draftsmen and artists everywhere when he secured the patent for the pencil with eraser on this day ...

The problem is it’s still a concept and as concepts go, the chance of success via ultimate production is slim. The person behind this ever-so-simple re-imagining of the humble pencil is Deuk Young Lee ...