Almanac: The pencil and eraser And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: March 30th, 1858, 156 years ago today . . . the day a Philadelphia inventor made his mark.

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 ...

It's time to sharpen your knowledge of pencil history! (Bet you can't guess what the first erasers were made of.) ...

Lipman, a Jamaican-born inventor from Philadelphia, submitted the patent for his " Combination of lead-pencil and eraser" in 1858, the same year the world saw its first can opener, mason jar, and ...