On this day – March 17th

The Rubber Band

More than a century and a half after the event, with rubber bands a commonplace of our office and home existence, it may seem strange that so simple a thing could be patented. But in the nineteenth century that was not of course the case.

A daft invention

Stephen Perry of St John's Wood and his business partner the wonderfully named Thomas Barnabas Daft, from Birmingham , already engaged in manufacturing other articles made possible by the recent advance in rubber technology, vulcanization, applied for British patent 13880 "For Improvements in Springs to be applied to Girths, Belts, and Bandages, and Improvements in the Manufacture of Elastic Bands."

Postmen, storemen and shopkeepers have reason to be thankful for a simple method of instantly binding small items together. But most of all schoolboys through the decades since have found surely the best uses for Perry and Daft's invention: the diligent among them to launch balsa wood gliders; the mischievous to fire missiles at friends.

So what was the date of Patent 13880?

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