The first factories manufacturing erasers from natural rubber appeared at the end of XIX century in America and Germany. Structure, form, and color of erasers have changed since then; only the name "eraser" that means "elastic" or "rubber" has remained. With time rubber was replaced by polymers similar to rubber which provided several advantages: longer period of storage and excellent quality of rub.

Today erasers are produced from different materials: rubber (natural, synthetic or even crude), plastic and vinyl. But eminent manufacturers still turn to their best samples in their summaries: "with addition of natural rubber".

Natural rubber is only a connecting substance and its quantity is no more than 10-20 % of the general structure of eraser. Natural rubber erases graphite lines well, although it has an important lack – it smears graphite. Besides the period of use of rubber erasers is less and they can cause allergic reaction.

For improvement of quality of deleting to the natural rubber there should be added some softeners. They are produced of animal or unsaturated vegetable oils, such as rapeseed oil mixed with sulfur, for example.

In the middle of the 50s of XX century manufactures applied polymers, such as polyvinyl chloride. Since then erasers are made both from natural and synthetic raw material.

Structure of natural erasers

The basic components of natural erasers are:
* rubber,
* factis (softener for rubber mixes),
* sulfur,
* quartz powder,
* filling.

Factis is extracted from the rapeseed seed milk and has white-yellow color. It is the most important component of eraser owing to the ability to adsorb graphite. Thanks to vulcanization (the process of heating and pressing a mass) and addition of sulfur sticky rubber mass gets elastic. Quartz powder and other stuffs (fillings), for example, cretaceous or pumiceous powder, are added depending on applicability of eraser. Dyes included in eraser define its color. For example, lipoton or zinc are used for white eraser, sulfide of mercury, ferric oxide or sulfide of antimony - for red, and so on.

Softness of eraser is defined by the proportion of components. Soft erasers contain more factis, firm erasers – more sulfurs and fillings.

Structure of synthetic erasers

Synthetic (or "plastic") erasers are made from soft vinyl materials which contain minimum of abrasive substances.

Often during manufacturing of this sort of erasers softeners and adsorption are added which provides elasticity. The products containing softeners possess an ability to transfer it to other synthetic substances in a close contact. Usually synthetic erasers are packed in polythene to avoid this process. An advantage of synthetic erasers is that their "shavings" or "crumbs" can be rolled into a ball and could be removed easily. Unlike natural erasers they don’t spoil and don’t stick to a working surface.