The Eraser Bread

An eraser is a piece of rubber or another material used to erase ink or pencil marks. There are some types of eraser like gum eraser, rubber eraser, kneaded eraser, pencil eraser and vinyl eraser.  

The eraser was actually invented accidentally when a  British stationer by the name of Edward Nairne. Initially he offered rubbers for sale in the UK in the 18th century, but they were then known as "gum elastic" instead of rubbers. Even though he made sure to remind buyers that the cubes would survive for years, he used to sell little cubes of the material for roughly three shillings, which was a significant sum of money at the time.

A man by the name of Lipman had the brilliant idea of placing a rubber on top of a pencil shortly after processed, vulcanized (stabilized), rubber had taken the place of gum elastic in the 19th century. 

 But did you know that before the eraser was created, pencil markings could be erased by rolling up a slice of white bread?

Even today, architects and art students were instructed to draw light strokes with a light pencil, then use an Indian rubber or a piece of bread to erase mistakes and brighten the markings made with charcoal or pastels.

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Have you ever wondered how pencil and eraser work?  Pencils work because their graphite combines with the fiber particles that make up the paper when they are placed on paper. Furthermore, erasers function because the polymers that make them up are stickier than the paper fibers, causing the graphite particles to adhere to the eraser rather than the paper. They resemble sticky magnets in many ways.

Nowadays, there are more erasers made of vinyl than synthetic rubber; the pink erasers you find on pencils are made of synthetic rubber. Because of its strength and flexibility, vinyl makes for erasers that "minimize crumbling" and provide "first-class erasing performance." In addition, the sound quality is obviously better with vinyl.