Did this cause complaints about losing data?

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Numerous sources on the web, probably almost all of them coming originally from some unidentified ur-source, tell us that it was on this day, in 1858, that Hyman Lipman, of Philadelphia received a patent for a pencil with an eraser attached to its opposite end.

Though I probably couldn't survive without a word processor, I keep a couple of pencils handy on the various desks from which I work. For me, some stages of writing are best accomplished with a pencil on paper. But as someone who, due to computer failure, has lost a bit too much information of late, I think I prefer crossing-through to erasing. The all-in-one pencil and eraser can certainly make writing easier, but for me writing is first and foremost a means of getting ideas onto paper (or into bits) so that they can be further manipulated later. Thus I'm less concerned with being able to make my page look neat, than I am with getting whatever ideas I may have onto the page so that I can continue to work with them and develop them. A crossed-out idea can still be read. An erased idea isn't there any more. Still, that pencil with the attach eraser was undoubtedly an important step forward in the ongoing march of information technologies.

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Go to: A life (sort of) lived.