Was sticking an eraser on the back of a pencil common sense, or a new invention? This week in 1868, Philadelphia stationery store owner H.L. Lipman patented something that seems incredibly obvious in hindsight: a regular pencil, with an eraser on the end.
Although Lipman is credited with this innovation, his pencil with eraser looked a little different than its modern descendant. Rather than being glued onto the end, Lipman envisioned a pencil with a chunk of rubber eraser in the core that could be accessed by sharpening it, the same way you would a pencil lead.
Graphite pencils had been around since the 1500s, writes David Green for Haaretz. But until the 1770s, the preferred tool used to erase pencil marks was balled-up bread.
Lipman’s name hasn’t gone down in history, maybe because he didn’t manage to hold on to his patent. After gaining it, he sold it to Joseph Reckendorfer in 1862 for about $2 million in today’s money. Reckendorfer also didn’t get much use out of the patent. He took another company to court over their use of his patent, only for it to be invalidated by the court’s decision, which stated that Lipman merely combined two existing things, but didn’t really produce something new.
Lipman essentially imagined the pencil as having a graphite end and a rubber eraser end.
“It may be more convenient to turn over the different ends of the same stick than to lay down one stick and take up another,” the decision noted. “This, however, is not invention within the patent law.”
Over his career, though, Lipman also made a number of contributions to the 19th-century office:
He was also America’s first envelope manufacturer, and it was he who had the idea of adding adhesive to the back flap, so as to make sealing easier. He devised a methods for binding papers with an eyelet that preceded the stapler by two decades. And Lipman was the first to produce and sell blank postcards in the United States, in 1873.
Pencils aren’t really a notable object, writes Henry Petroski in The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance, but they shape how people do their work. Unlike the pen, a more permanent writing instrument, the pencil doesn’t usually get sayings (it’s the pen that’s mightier than the sword, for example) or a lot of credit. But pencil is an essential creative medium, he writes, because it can be erased—as everyone from architects to artists can tell you.
“Ink is the cosmetic that ideas will wear when they go out in public,” he writes. “Graphite is their dirty truth.”
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credits: kat eschner, smithsonian.com, smithsonian magazine
a pencil can write 45,000 words
if you have some time on your hands, maybe give this fact a try. according to reports, the average pencil can write roughly 45,000 words and draw a line that is 38 miles long (61.2 km) long. what’s for sure, you’ll need a few stacks of paper on hand to try this one out. as a huge fan of writing utensils, this is very exciting news!
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“a pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.”
-joyce meyer
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source credits: getty images, mental floss
the long letter
written on the outside of my valentine
was even more important
than the card inside
the kinder who worked very hard to write it all down
read it out loud to me
confident, proud, with voice inflections, hands moving
and so much to say.
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“fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
-william wordsworth
have you ever wondered why the letters on the keyboard are organized the way they are? while it seems like the letters were randomly strewn across the keys, this method of organizing the keyboard was developed as way to slow down typists. back in 1872, typewriter users were typing too fast and causing the typewriters to jam. so, the QWERTY method actually kept the machines from breaking down and is still used today.
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“wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. ”
-william shakespeare
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source: mental floss, noam
You probably already know the interrobang, thanks to its popularity (You did what!?). Though the combination exclamation point and question mark can be replaced by using one of each, they can also be combined into a single glyph. The interrobang was invented by advertising executive Martin Speckter in 1962, who said “it is the typographical equivalent of a grimace or a shrug of the shoulders. It applied solely to the rhetorical, when a writer wished to convey incredulity.” The name is derived from the Latin word interrogatio, which means “questioning,” and bang—how printers refer to the exclamation mark.
side eye and some intense discussion going on at a recent meeting
as co-editors in chief olive and yeti make the tough calls.
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insider exclusive – behind the scenes backstory of ididnthavemyglasson.wordpress.com:
before each and every time i post a blog
i am subjected to the scrutiny of my photo editorial board
who can be
exacting and my most challenging critics
or
supportive and my most passionate champions
often made to defend my choices
i am never sure how it will go.
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“they can’t censor the gleam in my eye.”
charles laughton
“directly, or indirectly, everything we write is for someone.”
-author unknown
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Yesterday October 20 was the National Day on Writing.
The National Council of Teachers of English established the National Day on Writing
“to draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing Americans
engage in and to help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft.”
The Changing of the Guard – 1962
(one of my favorite episodes of one of my favorite shows by one of my favorite writers, rod serling)
OPENING: Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle, bookish guide to the young, who is about to discover that life still has certain surprises, and that the campus of the Rock Spring School for Boys lies on a direct path to another institution, commonly referred to as the Twilight Zone.
Professor Ellis Fowler is an elderly English literature teacher at the Rock Spring School, a boys’ prep school, who is forced into retirement after teaching for 51 years at the school. Looking through his old yearbooks and reminiscing about his former students, he becomes convinced that all of his lessons have been in vain and that he has accomplished nothing with his life.
Deeply depressed, he prepares to kill himself on the night of Christmas Eve next to a statue of the famous educator Horace Mann, with its quote “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Before he can follow through, however, he is called back to his classroom by a phantom bell, where he is visited by ghosts of several boys who were his students, all dead, several of whom died heroically.
The boys tell him of how he inspired them to become better men, and the difference he made in their lives. One posthumously received the Medal of Honor for actions at Iwo Jima; another died of leukemia after exposure to X-rays during research into cancer treatments; another died at Pearl Harbor after saving 12 other men. All were inspired by Fowler’s teachings. Moved to tears, Fowler hears the phantom bell again, and his former pupils disappear. Now accepting of his retirement, content that his life is fuller for having enriched the lives of the boys, he listens to his current students caroling outside his home.
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credits: imdb, twilight zone
(not me, but if i was a bearded male,
with a cup of espresso, a croissant, and a typewriter instead of a laptop,
this could have been me,
so – very similar to my situation with a few tweaks. )
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late last night (probably around 9 or so)
soon to fall asleep
at the comforting lake house of my friends
about to write and post my blog for the morning
a couple of friends
saw that i was still slightly awake
so why not sit down
have great chat for a couple of hours
when i finally closed my eyes while talking
we decided to call it a night
so just a few more minutes typing away
to tuck tomorrow’s post in for the night
and when i woke up it was morning and my fingers had fallen off of my laptop and my laptop had fallen on the floor and a fellow blogger reached out to ask if i was okay as there was no post so i quickly set up the post i had meant to finish the night before and balance was restored.
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“if you want to talk about someone falling asleep,
whether in their bed, in a car, at a desk, while reading a blog post about french grammar,
you would use s’endormir.”
-frenchtogether.com
I didn't have my glasses on.... 