Invention Of Paper Clip

Like the safety pin, the paper clip is a gloriously simple invention made from a single piece of wire, and like the safety pin it was invented in several places at almost the same time, although the credit usually goes to Johann Vaaler.

The paper clip is a relatively humble invention, but billions of them are used every year in offices around the globe. As with so many inventions, it was the result of an evolutionary process, and therefore it is difficult to name a single "inventor". In 1896 Matthew Schooley (USA) filed a US patent for a bent wire "paper clip or holder" that looked very much like a modern paper clip, but even this early patent stated: "I am aware that prior to my invention paper-clips have been made somewhat similar to mine in their general idea..."

Johann Vaaler (Norway) is generally accepted as the inventor of the paper clip, although he filed his patent three years after Schooley, in 1899 (granted 1900). One reason that Vaaler is usually named as the inventor may be that Vaaler's clip was flat (as is the standard modern clip), while Schooley's, although very similar shape, was raised in profile like the first coil of a spring in order to bind the papers without "puckering or bending" them - this, of course, would depend on the thickness of the sheaf of papers and proved to be an unnecessary embellishment.

However, Vaaler's design was no more the prototype of the modern paper clip than Schooley's: the defining characteristic of the standard modern clip is the loop within a loop, but Vaaler's had only a loop and a "leg". The double oval paper clip, now the standard design, is thought to have its origin with Gem Manufacturing Ltd (England), although the first documentary evidence of this design comes in a US patent for a paper clip-making machine, filed in 1899 by W.D. Middlebrook (USA). The double oval design was never explicitly patented (Middlebrook patented only the machine), but it is shown in the patent drawing as the end product of Middlebrook's machine, and was therefore clearly already in use by 1899, weakning Vaaler's claim. But whatever its provenance, and whoever the inventor, "Gem" is now the name used to describe the classic loop-within-a-loop paper clip.

Source - The Book of Inventions by Ian Harrison