It was in the late 17th and early 18th centuries people first heard talk of a substance that was sticky and bounced that was used for games and as tattoos in South America. The first documented mention of it comes in 1736 when the French scientist Charles Marie de la Condamine sent a sample of this substance back to France.
This was in 1770, and the name “rubber” was born because it could “rub out” marks. However, rubber was not commonly used for many years because of its tendency to become smelly and rotten when the temperature changed.
Charles Goodyear was the man that solved this problem. He was obsessed with finding a way to make rubber work, so he would spend hours in the kitchen mixing rubber with various household items, such as pepper, salt, and castor oil. One day, he accidentally dropped rubber mixed with sulfur onto a hot stove, and the rubber was “cured”. There were no longer any sticky messes to deal with, and the many uses of rubber started to be realized.
After the kinks were worked out, rubber stamping started becoming a common way to mark production tooling products and packages. Stamping companies gained more and more steam through the Industrial Revolution and even more so through the World Wars.
Nowadays there are companies that make custom made and self inking rubber stamps which are used for the home, office, and classroom. Though we now see them all the time, it is important to remember that stamps, just like every man-made product in our world, have a unique and wonderful history.