Correcting mistakes since 1770, National Rubber Eraser Day on April 15th commemorates the date the invention first began making written errors disappear.
- Pre-1770 – Crustless bread is used to erase charcoal markings.
- 1770 – Joseph Priestly found out a vegetable gum was able to remove pencil marks. He dubbed the substance “rubber.” It wasn’t widely accepted. Priestly is the same guy who discovered oxygen in 1774.
- 1770 – Edward Nairne developed the first marketed rubber eraser.
- 1839 – Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization (a method that would cure rubber and make it a durable material) This method made rubber erasers standard.
- 1858 – Hyman Lipman (Philadelphia, Pa.) patented the pencil with an eraser at the end.
- 1932 – The electric eraser was invented in 1932 by Arthur Dremel of Racine, Wisconsin, USA. It used a replaceable cylinder of eraser material held by a chuck driven on the axis of a motor. The speed of rotation allowed less pressure to be used, which minimized paper damage. Originally standard pencil-eraser rubber was used, later replaced by higher-performance vinyl. Dremel went on to develop an entire line of hand-held rotary power tools.
- Tablets of rubber (or wax) were used to erase lead or charcoal marks from the paper before there were rubber erasers.
- If pencils are one of the greatest inventions ever, erasers come in as a close second. Mistakes happen, after all. And the ability to make them go away, to start fresh, and express yourself in a whole new way never gets old!
- Nairne claimed to have come upon his invention accidentally: He inadvertently picked up a piece of rubber instead of breadcrumbs, he said, thereby realizing rubber’s erasing properties.
- Erasers were once called lead eaters.
- Pencil manufacturers make erasers, too, which makes sense since we tend to think that it’s a done deal – an eraser is a regular component of the everyday pencil. But that’s not always been the case.
- An eraser by any other name? Originally, what we now call an eraser was referred to as a “rubber” because the tree resin it was made of “rubbed out” pencil marks. In Great Britain, they still use the original term.
- An eraser isn’t called an eraser by eraser manufacturers, either. Their name for the little erasers on pencil ends – “plugs!”
- What is an Indian rubber eraser? It has two parts — red for black or colored pencil markings and blue for erasing ink
- More and more of today’s erasers are made from something other than rubber! While some of the “pink” erasers you find on pencils are made from synthetic rubber blended with pumice (a grit that enhances its ability to erase), an increasing number of erasers are made from vinyl. Vinyl is a type of durable, flexible plastic.
- Even to this day, most pencils sold in Europe are eraser-less!
- One of the ingredients in erasers is a substance called pumice. The type of pumice used were primarily pink or red.
- The Eberhard Faber Pencil Company brought the pink eraser to the world when it affixed the signature pink eraser to its pencils. Eventually, the company produced the pink pearl, a rectangular eraser that is still made today.
- In the United Kingdom, erasers are still known as rubbers.
- With erasers you should be able to take the graphite off in 2 strokes
- Erasers are used for EVERYTHING:
- According to Guinness World Records, the world’s largest eraser collection contains 19,571 erasers. The collector, Petra Engles of Germany, has been collecting erasers for more than 25 years.
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