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# I made one wrong mark and now I have to start the page over
- URL: https://www.thefrictionlog.com/02000/
- Published: 2026-10-03T14:05:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T15:12:15.000Z
- Description: Filed: 1564 · Solved: the 1770s in London · the rubber eraser · by Edward Nairne, instrument maker
- Author: The Clerk
- Tags: Solved, #solved 1770s

*I'm rubbing out a smudge with a piece of bread. The smudge is now bigger and the bread is now gray.* — Mapmaker, 1760

Before erasers, you rubbed out a pencil mark with a piece of bread. In 1770 Joseph Priestley wrote about a gum, sold in half-inch cubes by a London instrument maker, that took pencil right off the paper. People called the cubes rubbers, and the name stuck to the stuff itself. So the tires on your car are made of a material named for cleaning up pencil mistakes.

**Noted**: the eraser on the end of a pencil was patented in 1858\. In 1875 the Supreme Court ruled that putting it there wasn't an invention. It's still there.