WHAT'S THAT STUFF?
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ERASERS
Rubber 'graphite grabbers5 are simple but
indispensable tools for home and office
S
OME OF LIFE'S GREATEST TREAS-
ures are simple ones. Take
erasers, for example. These
small pieces of molded rubber
are underappreciated but handy
tools when it comes to a quick fix of some-
thing written in pencil or even in pen.
I had not given a thought to the chem-
istry behind erasers until a couple of years
ago when my family and I stumbled across
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's
giant typewriter eraser sculpture. The 14-
foot-tall eraser wheel with attached brush,
which sits on a patch of lawn in the Na-
tional Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden
in Washington, D.C., is more than a re-
minder of the bygone days of typewriters.
For Oldenburg, it was a reminder of the
simplicity of youth growing up around his
father's office desk. For me, there was
something hidden to explore in the giant
wheel. Although the sculpture is made
from stainless steel and fiberglass, the sym-
bolic rubber wheel was begging the ques-
tion, "What is an eraser?"
Although there are felt-pad chalk-
board and white board erasers, the
essence of an eraser is a plain piece of
rubber"graphite grabbers," some peo-
ple in the industry like to call them. Even
so, there are many types of these erasers,
including handheld flat rectangles, cylin-
drical plugs attached to a pencil, or caps
that fit over the end of a pencil. There are
also all sorts of colorful novelty erasers in
various geometric shapes with holiday,
animal, sports, and other motifs.
THE STORY of the chemistry behind
erasers is really a historical tale about rub-
ber. It begins with the development of the
pencil. Graphite began to be used as a writ-
ing device by the 1560s, and the first crude
pencils were fashioned shortly thereafter
(C&EN, Oct. 15,2001, page 35). At first,
unwanted pencil marks were rubbed off
with a ball of moist bread and probably
other similar materials.
In 1752, the proceedings of the French
Academy of Sciences n o t e d t h a t
caoutchouc (condensed latex) obtained
from the Hevea brasiliensis rubber tree
could be used to erase pencil marks. The
first scientific description of caoutchouc
HTTP: //PUBS ACS.ORG/CEN
had come during a French geographic ex-
pedition to South America in 1735. The
name rubber was given to caoutchouc in
1770, and is attributed to none other than
British-American chemistJoseph Priest-
ley. He noted that caoutchouc was use-
ful to "rub out" pencil marks; hence the
name rubber was born. In most parts of
the world, erasers are still called rubbers.
There was a drawback to the early
erasersand all materials made from rub-
bersince the rubber softened during
warm weather, became hard in cold weath-
er, and was stinky as it started to degrade.
Enter hardware merchant-turned-chemi-
BIG WHEEL Oldenburg and van
Bruggen's Typewriter Eraser, Scale X.
cal engineer Charles Goodyear, who, after
several years of work, developed the vul-
canization process to cure rubber in 1839.
During vulcanization, sulfur is added to
rubber and the mixture is heated under
pressure to form sulfur cross-links between
the rubber's polymer chains. The cross-
links increase the strength, stability, and
elasticity of the rubber.
After Goodyear's discovery, rubber be-
came broadly used for many common
items, including erasers. The first patent on
a combined pencil and rubber eraser was
granted in the U.S. in 1858. Most pencils
made for use outside the U.S. still don't
have attached erasers.
Natural rubber was chemically identi-
fied in the 1880s as c/V-polyisoprene,
synthesized in the rubber tree from 3-
methyl-3-butenyl pyrophosphate, an im-
portant building block for many natural
compounds. About 30% of the milky white
latex obtained from a cut on the rubber
tree is of-polyisoprene. The polymer is re-
covered from the liquid by using formic
acid to coagulate the polymer into curds,
which are then pressed into sheets.
Synthetic production of rubber wasn't
initially successful, since radical polymer-
ization of isoprene leads to random cis and
trans arrangements, giving a sticky and use-
less product. With the development of
Ziegler-Natta catalysts in the 1950s, how-
ever, 100% of-polyisoprene could be man-
ufactured. toz/tf-Polyisoprene, also known
as gutta-percha, is a harder material.
Several synthetic rubber compounds
have been used to make erasers. These in-
clude isoprene-isobutylene (butyl rubber),
styrene-butadiene, and ethylene-propyl-
ene copolymers. Synthetic rubber began
to replace natural rubber in erasers by the
1960s. Since the mid-1990s, erasers have
been made nearly exclusively with syn-
thetic rubber, primarily polyvinyl chlo-
ride. The driving force to complete the
changeover was to help prevent allergic re-
actions to latex, mainly in schoolchildren.
Erasers and other rubber products are
prepared by masticating the natural or
synthetic rubber, followed by mixing at
low heat to obtain the desired consis-
tency. During mixing, a variety of addi-
tives may be introduced: a small amount
of petroleum-based oil to aid mixing, sul-
fur and other reagents for vulcanization
(if needed), plasticizers to control firm-
ness, amine or phenol antioxidants, and
pigments. For erasers, high-silica pumice
or other abrasives may be added, espe-
cially if natural rubber is used.
Following mixing, the rubber is shaped
by extrusion or by placement in a mold. At
this point, the rubber is cured under pres-
sure and elevated temperature. Afterward,
the erasers are cut into the final shape or
removed from the mold, ready to be used.
For pencil erasers, cylindrical ribbons
of rubber are cut into short pieces called
plugs. The plugs are placed in a rotating
hopper that lines the plugs up on a con-
veyer belt that carries them to be married
up with a pencil. A band of metal called a
ferrule is glued onto the end of the pencil
where a recess has been cut, while at the
same time a plunger presses an eraser plug
into the ferrule. W h e n the glue dries,
everything is bliss.STEVE RITTER
C&EN /DECEMBER 16, 2002 33