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The ABCs of Office Inventions:  From Staplers to Safety Tools

by chiron99

We use them all the time, but most of us don't know the history
of those useful objects that cover our desks. Did you know that
the mother of ex-Monkee Mickey Dolenz was the inventor of Liquid
Paper? Read on to learn more about the fascinating history of
some of your other favorite office supplies.

The Stapler
The earliest known stapler was developed in eighteenth-century
France, at the request of King Louis XV. The name of the genius
who fabricated this helpful device for making paper stick
together hasn't been recorded, but we do know that each staple
was handmade (from gold, according to some sources) and imprinted
with royal insignia.

The stapler is one of those humble but useful inventions that
most of us take for granted. It gained renewed respect when, in
2001, a now-classic episode of "The Office" featured - yes -
spoilsport assistant manager Gareth Keenan's stapler trapped in a
gelatin dish. As of 2007, "Jell-O Stapler" yielded 1310 Google
hits.

The Paper Clip
This handy - if sometimes easy-to-spill - device was invented by
Samuel B. Fay, a US citizen, in 1867. However, the wire paper
clip, still in wide use today, was patented around 1890 by the
British Gem Manufacturing. In a classic example of the -
genericized trademark, - the word "Gem" is now used in Swedish to
denote "any paper clip."

A rival story claims that Herbert Spencer, the Victorian
polymath who coined the term "survival of the fittest," strongly
influenced Darwin, and almost got to be novelist George Eliot's
husband (he turned her down), also has the invention of the paper
clip to his credit. However, there is little evidence to support
this story.

The Office
Based on the Latin word "officium," which meant not only duty
(an important concept for those bureaucratic, no-fun Romans) but
also a formal position such as a magistrature.

The invention of the modern cubicle, meanwhile, is one of those
ironic stories with which the history of technology is rife.
(Television was originally intended as an educational device, for
example.) Colorado designer Robert Propst, working for Herman
Miller, Inc, developed the cubicle as part of a 1965 "Action
Office" prototype. It seems Propst was trying to liven up
workplace design.

The Mouse
Stanford designer Douglas Engelbart developed the first mouse in
1963. Engelbart's mouse was not the streamlined plastic device we
know today; it used two large gear-wheels, which could be turned
(slowly) to move up or down. Today's ball mouse came a few years
later - in 1972, when Engelbart's colleague Bill English chucked
out those two gear-wheels and replaced them with a single ball,
able to move in any direction (not just straight up and down).

The Filing Cabinet
African-American inventor Henry Brown patented a fire-safe
forged-metal  "receptacle for storing and preserving papers" "the
ancestor of today's filing cabinet" in November 1886. The -
vertical file - we all know and love had to wait twelve years,
until Edwin Seibels, an insurance-office worker, hit on the
space-saving idea of hanging files. (Before that, important
business papers were often folded into envelopes and stored in
pigeon holes.)

The Utility Knife
The original X-Acto knife - one ancestor of today's box cutter -
was invented by Polish immigrant Sundel Doniger, but we'd never
have known it if his brother-in-law, one Daniel Gl'ck - the
father of US Poet Laureate Louise Gluck - hadn't suggested that
hobbyists might find the thin metal knife useful. (Doniger had
hoped to market it to surgeons!)

<a href="http://www.Safecutters.com">Safecutters</a>  Inc.,
provides an online store of utility knife box cutters for opening
shipping boxes and shipping packages, as well as safety knives to
open moving boxes and packages.  For more information about
Klever Kutter and other Safecutters products contact us!

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