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, because Charles Goodyear had to first discover the secret of vulcanization. This is the process of “curing” the rubber so that it can be molded as needed. Before Mr. Goodyear’s discovery, rubber — in its natural state — was almost impossible to work with.It is sticky and cannot stay set in a particular shape. But with vulcanization, rubber, once cooled, would hold the shape in which it had been set.

Unhappily, Mr. Goodyear did not benefit financially from his invention, though he was publicly recognized by the Emperor of France, Napoleon himself, and decorated with many a prestigious honor. His invention, however, soon found many applications that were to change the world. One of these was dentures. Rubber was deermed a great substitute 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 an inquisitive nephew who saw 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 invented the rubber stamp we know today. But there exists, believe it or not, many different accounts of the origins of rubber stamps, depending on exactly how a rubber stamp is defined, 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 very popular and often accepted account of the invention the rubber stamp concerns a Mr. L.F. Witherell, who went so far as to compose “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 a problem one day that concerned the paint that was used to mark the pumps. The paint would run and obscure necessary information with blotches. Mr. Witherell came upon the idea of creating stencils out of some thin sheets of rubber packing laying around. But while creating the stencil, he thought further and 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 one account considered least plausible involves a Mr. Henry C. Leland, who was actually championed at the time by none other than the “Stamp Trade News,” published by a manufacturer of rubber stamps. But whatever its actual origins, there is no doubt that the rubber stamp itself has left quite an enduring impression on our world.