Hymen L Lipman was born in Kingston, Jamaica on 20 March 1817, emigrating to the United States in 1829 to live in Philadelphia
In 1840 he became the leading stationer in the city and in 1843 started the first envelope manufacturing company in the USA
On 30 March 1858, he registered a US Patent #19738A for a pencil with attached eraser. The patent application notes that the pencil is made in “the usual way” with one-fourth of its length reserved for a groove into which is inserted a piece of india rubber or “other erasive substance”. The finished pencil could be sharpened at both ends, one revealing the graphite lead and the other the rubber eraser.
Lipman sold the patent to Joseph Reckendorfer for $100,000 who later sued Faber for infringement, but in 1875 the US Supreme Court ruled the patent invalid because the invention was a “combination of two already known things with no new use”
