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Up until the 19th century, stacks of papers were bound with ribbons, strings, straight pins, or even clothes pins. All that changed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when several patents for the fastening device were filed. Although, the claim has been disputed, most sources cite Norwegian Johan Vaaler as the inventor of the simple yet effective paper clip. In 1899, Norway lacked a patent office, so Vaaler registered his device, a piece of wire bent into a "rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop," in Germany, and later, in the United States. Around the same time, Cornelius J. Brosnan from Springfield, Massachusetts, was issued a
U.S. patent for a similar device called the Konaclip. That familiar double-oval-shaped clip, sometimes called the Gem clip, we all know and love was actually never patented. In 1901, an American named William Middlebrook patented a paper-clip making machine for the Gem Manufacturing company in England. A sketch of the clip was included in the patent, but the patent only covered the machine itself. These indispensable office supplies are so versatile, only 1 in 10 paper clips is used for its intended purpose. They are commonly called on to clean out crevices, eject stuck computer discs, and sundry other tasks. But the little clip that could was far more than a fastener to Norwegians during the German
occupation of World War II. Prohibited from wearing anything with the king's initials, Norwegians took to wearing paper clips on their lapels to show national unity and opposition to the German occupation.
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