Millions of test-takers are in his debt

On this day, in 1958, Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia received a patent for attaching an eraser to one end of a pencil.
The patent was, ahem, erased by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1875, which ruled that a pencil with an eraser is just a pencil with an eraser and not something new and patentable.


From - Today in History | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine
via Boing Boing