People tried to correct mistakes they made while writing even before eraser was invented. To erase marks from the paper, they used tablets of rubber or wax. To remove ink from parchment or papyrus they used bits of rough stone like sandstone or pumice. In Japan, they used soft bread. It was not until that we found out that a natural rubber made from plants can be used as an eraser. That year, Edward Nairne, an English engineer, picked up a piece of rubber instead of breadcrumbs and discovered that rubber can erase pencil markings.
Solution to that problem came in when inventor Charles Goodyear invented the method of curing the rubber - vulcanization. This process made rubber more durable and allowed for the eraser to become a household item. Hymen Lipman patented an attaching of an eraser to the end of a pencil, but he later lost the license. The manufacturing of erasers is highly automated, with reliable products made in the millions each year. Experienced eraser manufacturers have refined the techniques used to the point where extensive inspection is not necessary.
The raw materials shipped to the manufacturer are supplied by companies that are known to provide substances with the proper characteristics. If a new substance is supplied, or if it comes from a new company, the eraser manufacturer may inspect it to be sure it meets all specifications.
Only a very small percentage of erasers need to be inspected to ensure that they have the proper physical properties.
Flats must be the correct size to fit into boxes. Plugs must have the correct dimensions to fit into ferrules. The hardness of erasers is critical to how well they will work. Experienced inspectors can easily tell if an eraser is too hard or too soft. Erasers have remained mostly unchanged for many years. Improvements in eraser technology are likely to be made in the way rubber is produced. New chemical formulas are constantly being developed to produce synthetic rubber in ways that are more efficient, less costly, and which result in products with more useful properties.
Genetic engineering may result in rubber trees that produce more latex, or trees that produce latex with physical properties that would make natural rubber production more efficient. A hint of the future of eraser design is seen in the Ergoraser, a unique eraser from Levenger, a company specializing in very high quality writing supplies.
The Ergoraser, developed after two years of research, is oval and curved, much like the shape of a spoon. The thumb fits inside the curve during use in a way which is designed to be comfortable and efficient. Although extremely expensive compared to ordinary erasers, the Ergoraser promises to play an important role in the future for those who demand the highest quality in simple objects.
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Send comment. Rubber gets all the attention, the show-off. Confusingly, even though rubber-the-material is named after rubber-the-tool-for-erasing-pencil-marks, not all erasers are made from rubber. We have an enormous variety of different erasers for different jobs: sticky putty rubbers for lifting charcoal dust and blotting colour, soft gum rubbers that crumble as soon as you look at them, hard and gritty rubbers that can remove ink but will shred a soft paper surface given half a chance, and those cheap and squeaky rubbers that seem to only smear and make more mess.
The original eraser, developed in by British engineer Edward Nairne, was made from natural rubber, otherwise known as caoutchouc, latex or gum elastic. This flowing vegetable fluid is collected in cups, coagulated by adding an acid usually formic acid , passed through heavy rollers to squeeze out any excess water, and then dried.
The inevitable deterioration of natural rubber can be halted by a process called vulcanization. This process was discovered in by Charles Goodyear oddly, no relation to Goodyear tyre manufacturers and was arguably one of the most important industrial discoveries of the age. Goodyear discovered that by mixing liquid rubber and sulphur and subjecting it to intense heat and pressure during the polymerisation process, he could make the inner structure of the rubber change, making it far stronger and more durable.
Named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, this hot process allows the normally disparate long chain molecules in uncured rubber to link to each other. Their inner structure goes from being like a bundle of dried spaghetti to a 3D fishing net: geometrically spaced, strong, resilient and elastic in any direction. That attention-hog natural rubber has taken us off on a tangent again…always craving the limelight! Now, back to our small friend the eraser.
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