The first erasers, for wiping out lead pencil marks, were pieces of bread. The modern eraser made of rubber appeared in the eighteenth century. The first suggestion to use rubber--a vegetable gum from South America called caoutchouc--as an eraser was recorded in 1752, probably from a Frenchman named Jean de Magellan (1723-1790). In 1770 the English scientist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) noted that he could use caoutchouc to rub out lead pencil marks in a manuscript. From this, caoutchouc got its familiar name of rubber, and in Great Britain erasers are still called rubbers. The idea for attaching a rubber eraser to the end of a pencil was patented in 1858 by both Hyman Lipman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Joseph Rechendorfer of New York City. The eraser with a hollowed-out end into which a pencil could be inserted was invented by J. B. Blair of Philadelphia in 1867; earlier versions also existed.Modern erasers are a mixture of rubber, vegetable oil, sulfur, and pumice.Erasableink is used on some pens. Plastic and synthetic rubber are also used to produce erasers.