Monday, March 30, 2009

Happy Anniversary

On today's date, 1858, Hymen Lipman was granted a patent for attaching a piece of rubber to the end of a pencil. While it was certainly a stroke of genius, the courts didn't think it to be as groundbreaking as one might think. From Smithsonian:

Unfortunately for Lipman, the patent would later be revoked, when the U.S. Supreme Court rules in 1875 that a pencil with an eraser is just a pencil with an eraser and not a new invention.

Smithsonian


No comments: