How Are Erasers Made?

If you have ever had to write a paper, invariably when you made a mistake, you had to erase said mistake. Sure, the pencil has been around for hundreds of years, but what about the eraser? Is it really made of rubber, or in the twenty-first century have we invented a superior, artificial eraser? Many questions about erasers are asked, and a little history lesson has to be taken to understand where that pink thing at the end of your pencil comes from.

The saying is "to err is human," and in writing this could not be truer. Humans have been recording their stories since the dawn of civilization, as well as making mistakes in those stories. In the past, a simple mistake would lead to the destruction of the whole tablet or parchment. As writing techniques became easier and more globally available, mistakes were no longer discarded, but were just crossed out. This created unattractive documents, and a striving to create something that could just remove the mistakes instead of leaving a blemish on the page.

Early items used to erase mistakes were wax tablets and white bread crumbs. However, in 1770 the English engineer Edward Nairne is credited with the discovery and subsequent terming of rubber. When Nairne accidentally grabbed a bit of latex instead of white bread to erase some work, he quickly discovered its superiority and natural ability to "rub off" pencil marks, and thus was created the term "rubber." This proved to be a temporary tool, as rubber is naturally perishable and is affected by temperature, making it hard in the winter, and soft in the summer.

It would not be until 1839 when Charles Goodyear developed the vulcanization process and thus make rubber durable for continuous use. This in turn would allow Hymen Lipman to invent a way to attach rubber erasers to the ends of pencils in 1858. Today, most erasers are made from a synthetic rubber, especially those found on the ends of pencils. These are forced into a long tube shape, vulcanized, chopped into plugs, and then placed into large tumbler machines capable of holding 600 pounds of erasers in order to round the edges. Vinyl plastic has also been developed for use as an eraser, as it does not require vulcanization or the use of tumbler. This allows them to instantly be cut and placed into the end of pencils. Rubber erasers are usually pink, green, or red, while vinyl erasers are most commonly white, but can be found in any color.