Who Invented the Stapler?
The first stapler was made for King Louis XV of France in the 18th century, while the first patent to be awarded for a stapler was in 1866 by an American named George McGill. In 1877, Henry R. Heyl filed patent number 195603 for the first machines to insert and clinch a staple in a single step.
A stapler is a mechanical instrument that joins pieces of paper together by driving a thin metal staple through multiple sheets and folding the ends. Staplers come in two common types, manual and electric. Manual staplers are handheld and are primarily used to join a few pieces of paper together. The electric stapler’s main function is to join a large number of sheets together in a more quick and efficient manner.
The first stapler was developed shortly after the invention of paper. Before the stapler was invented, wax, ribbon and glue were utilized in order to join individual pieces of paper together. The first stapler, created for King Louis XV of France, took the place of the wax seal bearing his royal insignia. It was made of gold and decorated with both precious stones and the royal seal.
It wasn’t until 1866 that the patent for a stapler that could be mass produced was filed. The inventor of this stapler design, George McGill, envisioned a device that bound pieces of paper together with a binder-type staple. However, his stapler only held one staple at a time. The stapler was further developed by the E.H. Hotchkiss Company, who invented a stapler similar to the models used today. The Hotchkiss stapler was incredibly successful due to its capacity to store multiple staples at a time.
The design of the stapler was further improved by Jack Linksy in 1937. Linksy is responsible for the invention of the Swingline stapler. Because the Swingline stapler required much less effort to load staples into the device, it quickly gained popularity after its release into the market. Today, Linksy’s simple and efficient stapler design is still used in the production of office staplers.
