This week I have decided to regale readers with a brief history of the stapler. Not convinced this will be interesting? Hopefully you’ll read the column anyway and find out; maybe it will even convince you to celebrate Fill Our Staplers Day, which is observed during the second full week of March and this year falls on March 13.
This quirky day of celebration was proposed by the Dull Men’s Club in order to save people time and to ensure their ability to fasten a stack of papers together continues unhindered during a busy day of work. Since this article is intended to be about staplers, I will simply direct my curious readers to the Dull Men’s Club website, dullmensclub.com, should they wish to learn more about this delightful and surprisingly far-spread club.
Circling back to the stapler, I will begin with the somewhat vague origins of this device. It is said to have been invented in the 1700’s during King Louis XV reign by an artisan working in the court, though the name of the inventor has been lost to time. Prior to the invention, people would use a sticky mixture of wax and metal to hold papers together. There was at least one additional attempt at paper fasteners that waw invented that waw inexpensive enough for those not of the nobility to afford them, but in 1866 George W. McGill patented his brass paper fasteners (staples) and we begin to see the precursor to the staples we are familiar with today.
In 1867 McGill demonstrated his staple press which could push the fasteners through the paper and secure them. By 1879 McGill had blown past any potential competitors by patenting the McGill Single-Storke Staple Press, even though the press required a fair amount of strength to operate. This design was followed by a series of improvements that eventually resulted in the desk stapler in 1923. Then Swingline invented the easy-to-load stapler in 1937 and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
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New and Coming Soon:
- At My Italian Table: Family Recipes from My Cucina to Yours by Laura Vitale; with Rachel Holtzman; photographs by Lauren Volo (Non-Fiction; Book)
- Christmas in Winter Valley: A Ransom Canyon Romance, Book 8 by Jodi Thomas (Fiction; Book, Large Print, eBook, eAudiobook)
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- The Frontier Overland Company: Book 1 by William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone (Fiction; Large Print)
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- Her Pretend Amish Boyfriend: Surprised by Love Series, Book 5 by Rachel J. Good (Fiction; Book, Large Print, eBook)
- Last Night by Luanne Rice (Fiction; Book, Large Print)
- Lost and Hound: A Sister Jane Novel, Book 15 by Rita Mae Brown; illustrated by Lee Gildea (Fiction; Book, Large Print)
- Tiffy Cooks: 88 Easy Asian Recipes from My Family to Yours by Tiffy Chen (Non-Fiction; Book)