Feb 18

Feb 18 Paperclip chains

Aimlessly making the paperclip chains to securing a thesis, paperclips are a useful item that we all seem to have a collection of in the bottom of our desk draws. The design of the paperclip is one that is simple, sleek, functional and sustainable. It has withstood the test of time.

The paperclip was designer over 120 years ago, it is a simple and intuitive design. Today it is still following the original design. Today in design we want products to be sustainable and recyclable. The paperclip is made of steel which is an eco-friendly material as there is relatively little energy used to produce it and any waste it produces in the manufacturing process is reusable, making the product 100% recyclable.

From the first invention of a straight pin that pierced each piece of paper to hold them together to refined designs that created less and less holes. The sleek design that it is today, stemmed from the ideas of Matthew Schooney’s two loop design which avoid creating any holes within the paper. The only drawback was sliding off the paperclip would rip the back of pages. William Middlebrook of Waterbury, Connecticut changed the design, slightly extending one end of the paperclip and then invented a machine to manufacture the paperclip design, this machine was called the gem. He patented the “Gem Paperclip” in 1899, it was not the product itself that had the patent, it was the design of the Gem machine used to create the paperclip. This meant that there have been thousands of different kinds of paperclips made in the last century. So for such a small and simple product that many people use, whether for paperclip chains or for holding documents together, it’s a very cleverly designed one.