🖇Paper clips: Holding it all together

They seem a vestige of an analog age—an artifact of the office stationery closet, alongside staplers, hole punches, and binder clips. But even as the world gets more digital, the paper clip keeps on keeping on. Over the past five years, the stock price of ACCO, the major American producer of paper clips, [has rocketed](. And as recently as 2011, Americans purchased [11 billion paper clips]( a year, or about 35 a head. But maybe it’s not so surprising. Sure, paper clips may not be flashy or glamorous, but they’re very good at the very specific thing that they do. It’s been [well over 100 years]( since a patent was issued to William Middlebrook for a paper-clip-making machine—yet despite a century of innovation, this very early piece of stationery tech has proven virtually unimprovable. (No one’s exactly sure who invented the clip itself, though there are many pretenders to the throne.) Maybe that’s why the paper clip has come to be so much more than a tool for holding documents together. In 2005, a Canadian blogger started with [a single red paper clip]( traded it 14 times, and ended up with a house. In the Second World War, Norwegians [pinned them to their lapels]( as a symbol of opposition to Nazism: Nowadays, thousands [follow suit]( to remember those killed in the Holocaust. The paper clip seems to suggest resilience, determination, and independence of thought—a surprising amount for a bit of wire, however elegantly looped it may be. 🐦 [Tweet this]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Brought to you by [Quartz Obsession] Paper clips July 10, 2018 Setting it straight --------------------------------------------------------------- They seem a vestige of an analog age—an artifact of the office stationery closet, alongside staplers, hole punches, and binder clips. But even as the world gets more digital, the paper clip keeps on keeping on. Over the past five years, the stock price of ACCO, the major American producer of paper clips, [has rocketed](. And as recently as 2011, Americans purchased [11 billion paper clips]( a year, or about 35 a head. But maybe it’s not so surprising. Sure, paper clips may not be flashy or glamorous, but they’re very good at the very specific thing that they do. It’s been [well over 100 years]( since a patent was issued to William Middlebrook for a paper-clip-making machine—yet despite a century of innovation, this very early piece of stationery tech has proven virtually unimprovable. (No one’s exactly sure who invented the clip itself, though there are many pretenders to the throne.) Maybe that’s why the paper clip has come to be so much more than a tool for holding documents together. In 2005, a Canadian blogger started with [a single red paper clip]( traded it 14 times, and ended up with a house. In the Second World War, Norwegians [pinned them to their lapels]( as a symbol of opposition to Nazism: Nowadays, thousands [follow suit]( to remember those killed in the Holocaust. The paper clip seems to suggest resilience, determination, and independence of thought—a surprising amount for a bit of wire, however elegantly looped it may be. 🐦 [Tweet this]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Giphy By the digits [1.5:]( Weight of a jumbo paper clip, in grams [$9.77:]( Price of a box of 300 paper clips, for ordinary office usage—that’s just over 3.25 cents each [$165:]( Price of a sterling silver paper clip from Tiffany’s & Co, apparently for use as a bookmark [928:]( Height of the world’s largest paper clip, in centimeters. (In comparison, the normal ones are about three centimeters long.) [19,143:]( Out of 100,000, number of paper clips estimated to be used as poker chips, according to one study. A further 14,163 are reportedly destroyed during telephone calls. [64,088:]( Patent number of the earliest known paper clip prototype, filed by Samuel B. Fay in 1867 [30,000,000:]( Total number of paper clips received by students at Whitwell Middle School, Tennessee, in a 20-year project to remember victims of the Holocaust Reuters/Yuri Gripas the case for compromise The perfection of the paper clip? --------------------------------------------------------------- The standard Gem paper clip is often heralded as a [masterwork of design]( Since its inception in the 1890s, when the technology and materials first became available, it’s been barely altered. More recent “improvements” were generally cast aside for being needlessly fussy, unduly expensive, or bulky. But James Ward, author of [Adventures in Stationery]( has a different take. It’s not so much that the Gem paper clip is perfect, he tells Quartz, but more that it does its job entirely adequately. “While it doesn’t have any of those benefits—it’s not easy to slide on, it doesn’t lie flat—it doesn’t have any of the downsides as well,” Ward says. “It’s not so much about perfection, it’s about compromise.” So, less a 10-out-of-10 perfection as an 8-out-of-10 solution. “But it’s the best option out of all of the others.” There’s also a certain poetry to the fact that the paper clip is a product of precisely the environment in which it thrives. Along with industrialization and mass production came the need for bureaucracy, paperwork, and ways to manage it. “Those two things created the ecosystem of the office,” says Ward. “Whether it’s paper clips or staplers, they all kind of came around the same time as a consequence—as an answer to the problem, and also the result.” Brought to you by The Information There’s content and then there’s information. --------------------------------------------------------------- The Information’s reporters inquire deeply within Silicon Valley, uncovering exclusive and groundbreaking stories about today’s leading technology companies you won't find anywhere else. The Information’s premium, award-winning investigative journalism is read by tens of thousands of global executives.[Sign up for The Information's free Saturday newsletter.]( AP Photo/Paul Sakuma Brief history [1899:]( Norwegian patent clerk Johan Vaaler files a patent application for “a spring material, such as a piece of wire, that is bent to a rectangular, triangular or otherwise shaped hoop”—though the Early Office Museum claims, a little brusquely, “His designs were neither first nor important.” [1904:]( Cushman & Denison register the first known trademark for “Gem” paper clips, a prototype of the now-standard design. [1910:]( The binder clip is invented by Louis E. Baltzley, in Washington. [1945:]( The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency launches Operation Paperclip, a secret postwar program in which more than 1,600 German scientists and technicians were employed by the US government. [1994:]( The United States introduces anti-dumping tariffs against China on paper clips. [1999:]( Norway honors the paper clip, and its purported Scandinavian inventor, with a red and white postage stamp. [2004:]( The paper clip gets a big nod from the design world, appearing in MoMA’s 2004 show Humble Masterpieces. [2018:]( A “new and improved” binder clip makes its debut at the [International Stationery & Office Products Fair]( in Tokyo. Quotable “Could there possibly be anything better than a paper clip to do the job that a paper clip does? The common paper clip is light, inexpensive, strong, easy to use, and is quite good-looking. There is a neatness of line to it that could not violate the ethos of any purist.” — American architectural critic Paul Goldberger, [New York Times]( 1981 Giphy And now he’s dead In Memoriam: “Clippy” --------------------------------------------------------------- R.I.P., Office Assistant (or maybe we mean good riddance). From 1997 to 2004, Clippy, né Clippit, came as standard with Microsoft Office, there to help you write a letter or encourage you to revise your fragments. The animated paper clip was near-universally reviled, with women in particular taking umbrage at what they perceived to be a leering, patronizing avatar. And yet, Microsoft [summarily ignored]( this focus-group finding and pressed on with their cock-eyed hero. Once the company finally called it quits on Clippy, it did so via an online game in which haters could pelt the hated character with virtual rubber bands, staples, and other office supplies. It was so unlike Microsoft, product manager Lisa Gurry told [USA Today]( that some couldn’t tell whether it was a spoof. “There was a lot of speculation of whether Microsoft did that or whether it was an anti-Microsoft campaign,” Gurry said. “We got a kick out of that.” Fun fact! Paper clips are metal, yet they float in water. The secret is [surface tension]( which forms a kind of molecular “skin” that suspends the clip at the top of the liquid. (This is also allow what allows insects to seemingly walk across the surface of a pond.) Giphy Pop quiz What can’t you do with a paper clip? Extend your bra strapOpen a lockRewire a fuseReplace your car aerial Correct. Incorrect. Of course, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Watch this! Gettin’ clippy with it --------------------------------------------------------------- In a near-empty Japanese train carriage, seven paper clips hoist themselves up and begin to boogie. It looks like magic, but it’s actually magnetism. You don’t have to understand the science to appreciate the joy of some jiggling clips, though Popular Science has [a good explainer]( if you’d like to investigate. take me down this 🐰 hole! Enter the maximizer --------------------------------------------------------------- Late last year, game designer Franz Lantz [released a game]( called “Paperclips.” It’s basically math, but you don’t need any kind of superior training to understand its spreadsheets and equations—and being barely numerate is not necessarily a barrier to its addictive qualities. In the game, you run a super-intelligent AI, tasked with making paper clips as efficiently as it possibly can. It sounds straightforward, but buyer beware: At the end, you’re left with “something truly monstrous, something that consumes not only the entire world, but the entire universe”—though you’ll have to finish it off to find out what. Here’s the fun part: The game is [actually based on a famous AI thought experiment]( known as the paperclip maximizer, which shows that an AI [“designed competently and without malice, could ultimately destroy humanity.”]( Sweet analog dreams! Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh Poll What’s your preferred way to hold paper together? [Click here to vote]( Staples—though there’s nothing more irritating than a jam.Paper clips. Why mess with a classic?Binder clips. I like something with a bit of bite. 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