To err is human, to erase divine. Well, maybe not divine but the fact remains that humans are prone to making mistakes, especially when learning something new. If you were going to be successful at school, you were going to be doing a lot of erasing. And should you be the nervous type, nothing beat gnawing at that little pink nub at the end of the pencil.

Truth be told, the facts and history surrounding erasers is somewhat boring (unless you are a curator at the eraser museum perhaps.)  Known alternatively as ‘erasers’ in America and ‘rubbers’ in the U.K, these rubbery knobs, tips, rectangles and blobs were designed to remove pencil and some pen markings.  They were available in white, brown and pink versions, although now erasers can be found in any color of the rainbow (with just as many varieties in purpose.)

The first kind of eraser most people encountered in life were those attached at the back end of a pencil (In fact, many erasers are made by pencil manufacturers, which certainly makes sense). Although the little guy at the butt end of the pencil was pretty good at erasing most marks, having to use it was often a task fraught with danger.  A dark enough pencil mark was sure to never come out, unless the paper was to be worn thin. If it just so happened that the paper was thin to start with, like the newspaper-type lined paper we used in Kindergarten, an eraser would cut through it like a knife through butter.  The best pencil erasers were flexible and a bit softer, unlike their cheap pencil counterparts that came with erasers as hard as marbles. If you wanted the job done right, you needed to purchase a secondary eraser (a brilliant ploy likely devised by the evil pencil industry.)

Cap erasers came in a variety of forms, from the typical pink or red pyramid-esque shapes to more unorthodox forms resembling pop culture characters from Frito Bandito to Mickey Mouse (and animals galore.) Sadly, many of these character and animal erasers never made it past day two.  Appendages were likely to break off and ears were worn down after even just one rendezvous with a difficult spelling test.  Of course, it never stopped kids from keeping these battle-scarred soldiers in their desk… ready to be called into action at the drop of a long division problem.

Some chose to eliminate the need to top a pencil off. A simple pink parallelogram, perhaps with the name Pink Pearl emblazoned on the front would often do the trick.  As time has gone by, newer, more technologically advanced erasers have made their way onto the scene, like Magic Rub, as well as a number of refillable devices filled with an eraser meant to be clicked down like a mechanical pencil. And who could forget the introduction of the super-popular “Eraser Mate” pens in the early 80s? Now you could actually use a pen and still correct your mistakes. While those hard as a rock white erasers of yesteryear had always claimed to be able to erase ink, they usually did more harm than good. These pens were a technological breakthrough to the world of erasing (at least until people realized that perhaps being able to erase something that was meant to be permanent wasn’t always a good thing.)

It should also be noted that students and wordsmiths aren’t the only ones in the market for a reliable eraser.  Artists and art students have an even wider variety of erasers available at their fingertips, from the ironically hard GUM Eraser, to the kneaded rubber eraser, both excellent at gently taking away the most difficult of markings.

Make no mistake about it; erasers have been an integral part of our lives, from their discovery in the late 18^th century to today. As long as humans continue to make mistakes, and as long as they continue to use paper, there will be a need for erasers – certainly words of comfort for the legions of pencil users who are hopelessly addicted to chewing on those little pink protrusions.