Rubber Stamps have an interesting history for those who don’t know that they might have been inspired by dentures. Yes, it’s true: dental dentures! But now, some background, since Charles Goodyear had to discover the secret to vulcanization first. This is the process of “curing” rubber such that it can be molded as required. Before Mr. Goodyear invented the process of vulcanization, rubber — in its natural state — was not easy to work with at all.It is sticky and cannot stay set in any one particular shape. But with vulcanization, rubber, once cooled, would stay in the very the shape of its mold.
Unhappily, Mr. Goodyear never benefited financially from his invention, though he was publicly recognized by the Emperor of France, Napoleon himself, and prestigiously decorated with many honors. His invention, however, soon found many applications that changed the world. One of these was dentures. Rubber was deemed to be a great replacement material for the dentures of the day, which were often made of metal or even wood.Dentists had long been making their own dentures, and one of these many dentists had a curious nephew who realized the potential of rubber and eventually wound up making rubber stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. This nephew was a Mr. James Woodruff, is often credited with having came up with the quality rubber stamp we know today. But there are, actually, many different versions for how rubber stamps came to be, depending on exactly what a rubber stamp is, with one even stretching all the way back to the ancient Mayans! This version just presented is among the most widely accepted accounts for the marking devices which we today would most immediately recognize as being a rubber stamp.
Another widely popular and acknowledged account of the invention the rubber stamp concerns a Mr. L.F. Witherell, who went so far as to compose a document titled “How I Came to Discover the Rubber Stamp,” in which he claimed to have been inspired during work as a foreman at a wooden pump manufacturing facility. According to Mr. Witherell, there was an issue one day with the paint that was used to mark the pumps. The paint would run and obscure necessary information. Mr. Witherell came upon the idea of creating stencils out of some thin sheets of rubber packing laying around. But while making his stencil, he decided to simply create thick letters out of the rubber, then glue them to a backing of wood, with which he could make repeated impressions of the necessary marks.
The account held least likely involves a Mr. Henry C. Leland, who was actually championed, ironically, at the time by none other than the “Stamp Trade News,” published by a manufacturer of rubber stamps.But whatever its actual origins, there can be no doubt that the rubber stamp itself has left quite an enduring impression on our world.