Who invented the eraser?
Well, what does an eraser do it sometimes helps us to undo our mistakes right so let's talk about the invention of the eraser today let's go.
Erasers are the little board of rubber that almost like magic and undo your mistakes and changes marked by tiny little pencils these vital inventions can come in various colors, shapes, and sizes and can be made of different materials like denial plastic or gum-like materials through modern erasers are relatively new inventions but releases a general category candidate back as old as writing itself.
Yes before rubber erasers the ancient Greeks used wax tablets to erase lead or charcoal marks from paper while other cultures use bits of rough stone such as sandstone or pumice to remove minor errors from parchment or paperless documents written in ink. Until 1700 the Japanese used soft bread that can be decrusted moistened and boiled up as a way of erasing writing errors.
But it was in 1736 a French explorer named Charles Marie de la Condamine came across a few South American native Indians using a particular tree reason to make bouncing balls so he decided to send these robbery reasons to Europe prompting intense scientific interest.
Over day the English scientist Joseph Priestley discovered its mystical ability to rub lead pencil marks and called it rubber. Though Joseph may have discovered robbers erasing properties its the British engineer Edward Nairne who is generally credited with developing and marketing the first rubber eraser in Europe and Edward claimed to have come upon his invention accidentally.
Yes one fine day while writing instead of bread crumbs he mistakenly picked up a piece of rubber and realised its erasing properties soon he began selling rubber erasers that became popular among the masses but there was a tiny weenie problem with this product as the rubbers were not durable and would rot, a solution to this rotting problem came in 1839 when an American inventor Charles Goodyear accidentally discovered how to vulcanize rubber after dropping a piece of material treated with sulphur on a hot stove this process made rubber long-lasting and helped it achieve the popularity its choice today.
But how do these eraser swipe the paper clean. well, it works due to the properties of pencil marks yes see the pencil lid is made of graphite, a soft material made up of crystals and carbons these graphites are mixed with clay to make a hard pencil lid.
So when we use this mixture to write on paper it sticks to the paper's fibers but as eraser materials are more sticky than fiber particles of paper the graphite particles end up getting stuck to the eraser instead isn't it magical my friends.
Fun Facts
Do you know the little razors on pencil ends are known as plugs yes and those small metal bands containing the plugs are called ferrules.
If you found this information interesting stay tuned for the invention of the pencil which I'm gonna be giving in this blog only, thanks for reading
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