New Delhi, May 18 -- In the 1770s, Vidya Rajan writes in her book Rubber: The Social and Natural History of an Indispensable Substance, an English engineer called Edward Nairne was believed to have used a piece of rubber to erase pencil marks for the first time. Most likely, he didn't have bits of bread handy, which were then used for this purpose.

It proved to be a happy accident, making Nairne a rich man. In the nascent days of his discovery, he sold the first erasers for as much as 3 shillings a piece, equivalent to the income of a daily-wage labourer of his time. Some 250 years later, rubber continues to serve millions around the world, from artists and architects to writers and schoolkids.

Even this benign episode has an undercurre...