Paperclips

[rhythmaning]

Recently, the Economist decided to send me a book. They have sent me a few things recently, presumably because I am a subscriber and hence a generally good guy. And also, I suppose, because they have excess stuff that they can’t sell, so they decided to give it away.

Anyhow, the book is called “Business Miscellany”, full of fairly random facts that I have enjoyed flicking through over the past couple of days. (My wife asked if I read the encyclopaedia when I was a child; I said yes. She replied, “Yes, a lot of little boys do that.”)

There is a very entertaining section on inventions and patents.

Something that has bothered me for a long while is the question of who invented the paperclip? Something so simple – a piece of twisted metal – so banal, so everyday… and so essential. But there must have been a time when paper clips didn’t exist, before someone (who?!) actually thought of attaching two pieces of paper together with a little bit of wire.

(OK, it didn’t bother me so much that I researched the subject or anything. I haven’t even seen if there is an entry on “paperclips” in wikipedia. I have now, of course, because I just thought of it. There is!)

Well, the Business Miscellany tells me that Johan Vaaler patented the paperclip in 1899 – not very long ago. But… But it goes on to say that his design “never really caught on” because the design most commonly in use today was already in production.

So someone had already invented it! The Business Miscellany hasn’t answered my question at all.

Wikipedia has nearly come to my rescue, though: ‘The most common type of wire paper clip was never patented, but it was probably in production in Britain as early as 1890 by "The Gem Manufacturing Company"’. But still, before 1890, what did they do? Why had no one had the idea?

Comments

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

It's a natural progression. At first there were no paperclips to play with and bend into new shapes. When the office workers of the time were bored they played with pins instead. Some people would bend their pins twice creating the three sections needed to hold paper in place. Eventually a few people used their freshly bent pins to try and hold paper together. Since the curved section slides onto the paper easily it's only a small refinement to add a third bend so only curves contact the paper.

Thus a paperclip is born.

Similarly, pins were also born from the efforts of bored office workers. They were throwing sharpened quills at a paper target when they realised that not only had they accidentally used two pieces of paper but that the sharpened quills pinned them together.