The History of the Stapler

If we define the stapler as a machine for fastening papers together, then the earliest recorded account of a stapler comes from 18th century France.

Legend has it that a stapler was developed during the 1700's for the exclusive use of King Louis XV of France. The ornate handmade staples for this device (some accounts claim that the staples were made of gold, and encrusted with precious stones) were imprinted with the royal court's insignia.

The First American Stapler... Not

Many sources credit Samuel Slocum of Poughkeepsie, NY with inventing the first stapler in 1841 for his patent titled Machine for Sticking Pins into Paper, (US Patent 2275).   This is not accurate!   Slocum's machine is not a stapler or paper fastener; its function is as a packaging machine for sewing pins.

It's easy to understand how someone could mistake this machine for a paper fastener.   The title of the invention - Machine for Sticking Pins into Paper- could easily lead one to assume that the pins are inserted to fasten papers together.   There's nothing in the patent's description to contradict this assumption.

However, while the machine does stick pins into paper, it is the pins that are the final product - the paper is simply a convenient holder for the pins.   Slocum's machine enabled Great-Aunt Clara to buy her sewing pins packaged sixteen-to-a-card rather than loose.

Slocum's Machine - 1841.    Not a stapler.

Later patents for machines of this type (including Howe's patent of 1843 which references Slocum) make it clear that the intent is not to pin paper together but rather to put the pins into paper for packaging.   Common sense backs this up - a machine that simultaneously sticks 16 pins into a crimped single sheet of paper is not a stapler.

Early Staplers

1859
The first paper fastener was not a stapler but an eyelet machine.   While most early eyelet machines were for leather fastening (think boot lace eyelets), there was a simple machine patented in 1859 that was designed (according to the patent description) to fasten "a number of folds of paper, cloth, leather, or other soft material".   It is interesting that the description mentioned "paper" first.

This machine required three operations: Punch the material, insert the fastener, clinch the fastener.   The main advantage of this press was that it had a single lever to both punch the material and clinch (swage) the eyelet.

This was the basic design for all eyelet machines, including the ubiquitous "Challenge Eyelet Press", until 1916 when the Ajax Eyelet machine automated the feeding, punching, and clinching into a single operation.

1868
We're getting closer now. In 1868, Albert Kletzker of St Louis, MO patented a device he called a "Paper Clip"

This machine used a staple to fasten paper.  A single large staple was placed between the scary looking points on the base of the machine;   the papers to be fastened were then placed on top of the points.

When the plunger was depressed, the points pierced the papers and inserted the staple.

This machine did not clinch the staple.   After the staple was inserted, the papers and staple had to be removed from the machine and the staple ends bent over by hand.

A similar device was patented in 1874 by Abraham Goldsmith of Charleston, SC.

1877
The first machine to insert and clinch a staple with a single operation was patented by Henry R. Heyl of Philadelphia, PA on September 25, 1877.

Examples of this machine exist but they are very rare.  A computer glitch kept me from bidding on one of these in an online auction a few years back.   I'm still pissed off about it.

1879
On February 18, 1879, George W. McGill of New York was awarded a patent for what would become the first commercially successful stapler - The McGill's Patent Single Stroke Staple Press.   This device used wire staples that were inserted into the machine one at a time.  The "Single-Stroke" part of the name derives not from the one-at-a-time loading of the staples, but from the fact that the machine inserted and clinched a wire staple in a single operation of the plunger.   This set it apart from most other paper fasteners of the time that required multiple operations.

This machine is quite simple.   It consists of a cast iron base with an anvil, and a pivoting arm that holds a spring-loaded ram that is actuated by a plunger. The anvil in the base is shaped so that it curls the points of the staple inward after they've pierce the paper.   This machine was the first to use a fixed anvil in the base; one that is remarkably similar to that of modern staplers.

1895
The first strip-fed stapler, the Star Automatic Paper Fastener was introduced by the Jones Manufacturing Company of Norwalk, CT (later becoming the E. H. Hotchkiss Co.).   This machine used tin-coated steel staples formed into a continuous strip.   This type of machine was easy to load but because of the high cost of staples and the introduction of "cohered wire" (modern) staples, strip staplers had diminished greatly in popularity by the late 1920's (although they lingered around for decades - I have some Crofoot strip staples from the 1960's).

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