Short Stuff: Paperclips

See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck and Jerry's here for Dave. So this is an official short stuff. Boom, I just stamped it with the official seal.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  That's right. A big thanks to Thoughtco, Gizmodo, Slate, Science American, University of Michigan, go Wolverines, University of Houston, Houston?

• 0:58Speaker 02

  University of Houston, go Cowgars.

• 1:01Josh Clark?

  Is it, are they the Cougars?

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

• 1:04Josh Clark?

  Huh. Are there a lot of Cougars roaming around Houston?

• 1:08Speaker 02

  You kidding me? They love, they love those young guys out there.

• 1:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I get you. Those kind of Cougars.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, those are places where I found some pretty good resources on the history of the paperclip, which when I started on this, I expected to be pretty straightforward. Turns out it is not at all. I was thrilled and delighted to find that the history of the paperclip is pretty convoluted. There's a lot of bad information out there and we're going to shuffle it all into place into a coherent, fact-based, conceptually amazing short stuff.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought this is a really good one. This is classic short stuff stuff. So before the paperclip. And hey, I love a paperclip, but there ain't nothing classier than making a slit in the top right corner of a page and running some ribbon through there to keep some paper together.

• 2:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the choices between ribbon are limitless.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it just, it looks so good.

• 2:11Josh Clark?

  For sure. And that's why people did that for centuries and centuries and centuries. I don't remember exactly when that started, but it was probably early medieval, if I remember correctly. And it wasn't until the late 19th century that paperclips started to come along. And they weren't something that was invented quite out of the gate, but not too long after people started tinkering with this, did we arrive at the paperclip as we understand it today?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was one of those weird things that a few different people, just, you know, not working together, created this very similar thing at the same time, or around the same time. And the reason this happened seems to be because making like needles and metal wire became, you know, they had the machinery to do this kind of thing at this time. And people are like, hey, what all can we do with little needles and little pieces of wire besides using them for sewing?

• 3:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, or poking your eye out.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:08Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, so apparently several men around the world in the last couple decades of the 19th century saw a really good use for mass-produced wire was paperclips. They're a way to bind paper, I think is a better way to put it. Some people really didn't, they just kind of phoned it in. They're like, here, just chop it off and jam this through the paper. And most people said, we prefer the ribbon technique over that.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:35Josh Clark?

  But the guy who, who really came the closest out of the gate to inventing what we understand as the paperclip, it's called the gem paperclip, was a Norwegian man named Johan Valer.

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  I've also seen it spelled V O L E R, so Voler? Johann Voler?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Sure. And that's Jim, capital G E M, and we'll get to the naming of that in a second. But yeah, he made a paperclip that didn't have the second smaller oval inside the larger oval. It was just the one larger outer oval. But he's credited, I mean, I think there was a German newspaper in the 1920s that kind of misreported, like him being the sole inventor of the paperclip, and everyone now looks at him as the inventor of the paperclip.

• 4:26Josh Clark?

  Like around the world.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. He couldn't get a patent in Norway, so he got them in Germany and the United States. And this was in 1899 and 1901. But everybody around the world calls him the inventor, even though there were at least a couple of people, a couple of few decades before, that invented a paperclip.

• 4:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, both Americans. One guy was Samuel B. Faye. He seems to be the first one to have invented a bent wire paperclip, or at least he was the first to patent it back in 1867.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:55Josh Clark?

  There's a guy named Earlman J. Wright. In 1877, he got a patent for an improvement on Faye's bent wire paperclip. And Samuel Faye's paperclip, you know those awareness lapel pins that people wear for all sorts of different stuff?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:14Josh Clark?

  That's what his, his paperclip looked like. And I think they're still kind of around today. So you would call that a Faye paperclip. I would. Or a Sam Bee.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Hey, toss me a Sam Bee. I need to get these papers clipped.

• 5:28Josh Clark?

  Exactly. I want to poke my eye out.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  So have you, what is the deal with that? Have you ever poked your eye out with a paperclip?

• 5:35Josh Clark?

  No.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Is that common?

• 5:35Josh Clark?

  Anytime I think of, so there's a couple of things. Anytime I think of like a, just a sharp, pointy something, poke your eye out.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:43Josh Clark?

  And then anytime I see like a hearth made of stone or brick, I always imagine some poor kid just stumbling and cracking their head open on that hearth. Also, anything with a really sharp corner too, I don't like that at all.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you don't have like a compulsion like if you have a pointy thing, you're not like, "Don't do it, Josh."

• 6:05Josh Clark?

  No, no, I don't. I don't feel the call of the void for bashing my head into the edge of a coffee table.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  It's opposite. You're cautious.

• 6:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Have you ever seen those bumper pads that people put on the corner of coffee tables when they have kids?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  I had a kid, so yeah, we had plenty of those.

• 6:22Josh Clark?

  Okay, that's the reason why, because it's possible. It's not just me being crazy. Like, that's possible.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think that's an unusual fear.

• 6:30Josh Clark?

  All right. Well, that's where my paperclip thing comes from.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Okay, gotcha. So back to the gem paperclip, capital J, I'm sorry, I just did it, capital G E M. It's named that because they were made on the behalf of the gem manufacturing company that was in the UK. And this was in 1899, and a Connecticut man named William Middlebrook came up with this, what was it, the design or the machine?

• 6:54Josh Clark?

  The machine to make them.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, because the long and short of it is no one, like Middlebrook didn't, and the gem company didn't patent the actual paperclip. They patented the machine that made them. So anybody that's making a gem-style paperclip from that point on could just do it if they had the resources.

• 7:08Josh Clark?

  Right, which is one reason why when we think of paperclips today, we think of gem paperclips because they are worldwide. They're made everywhere. You don't have to pay any royalties. You never had to pay any royalties with them. So the paperclip we think of, the two ovals, one inside of the other, that's the gem paperclip. And I'm glad you keep spelling it out because I'm sure people would be confused and think that you were talking about the truly, truly, truly outrageous rocker girl gem. Her paperclip. I think people would be very misled had you not set them straight.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. Since you mentioned that, I think we need to shout out Britta Phillips.

• 7:49Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah? How so? Who? What?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure that Britta Phillips, who is the bass player of one of my favorite all-time bands, Luna, and married to Dean Wareham, and Dean's brother Anthony is a listener to the show. Wow, this came full circle. So shout out to Anthony and Dean and Britta because Britta played, oh, no, it wasn't G, it was J E M. The cartoon, Gem and the Holograms.

• 8:14Josh Clark?

  Who did she play? She played Jim?

• 8:16Speaker 02

  She played Jim. She voiced Jim.

• 8:18Josh Clark?

  Oh, oh, on the actual cartoon?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:21Josh Clark?

  That was a good cartoon. I actually watched that when I was a kid.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  I really struggle with that, but anyway, shout out to Dean, Britta, and Anthony.

• 8:28Josh Clark?

  Nice. I think we should take a break, man. We haven't yet.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  No, let's do it.

• 8:33Josh Clark?

  Okay, here we go.

• 8:46Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  That's right. Make a smart buy on the off-road Ready Tacoma or Half-Ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks, built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventure, and the rugged style for everything in between.

• 9:09Josh Clark?

  Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you can trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 9:49Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 10:16Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 10:39Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 10:43Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  All right, so back to the gem paperclip. You know, the sort of regular-sized one, not the tiny one and not the giant ones, is about an inch, can hold supposedly about 20 sheets of regular paper, pretty well. About 20 billion are made every year, and Americans, apparently, use 11 billion of those.

• 11:16Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  And you pointed out, very astutely, that paperclips are used, obviously, to bind paper, but those things can be undone and used, most often, to poke the little reset buttons in a lot of technology hardware. Back in the day, if you wanted to open your CD-ROM tray, if it was stuck, you would use that. In elementary school, I don't know if you did this, but you could unfold it and make it into something that, when you drop it, pops up in the air.

• 11:44Josh Clark?

  Oh, I was never able to do that, but yeah.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you would bend it such a way that it's like a bear trap or something, you know, it's like, I mean, I know there's a word for this, but, and we would have contests to see who could make theirs pop the highest.

• 11:59Josh Clark?

  Nice. You could also shoot them pretty far with a rubber band and potentially take someone's eye out.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  That's, oh, man, your biggest fear.

• 12:07Josh Clark?

  Right. So, one of the things about the gem paperclip is, it's been around for 125 years, at least. It's been virtually the same for 125 years, so there's probably a lot of people walking around thinking like, "Well, it's a perfect thing, it has a perfect design, can't be improved on," and that is just so wrong. You shouldn't even say that out loud.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if you've ever had a tangled-up box of paperclips, you know the frustration that comes with that. If you've ever, you know, had one out in moisture, you know that they can rust and rust that paper. Usually not a big deal, but if it's an important paper, you don't want rust on that thing.

• 12:45Josh Clark?

  No.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  What else?

• 12:48Josh Clark?

  Also Chuck, the cut end of the wire can poke through the paper. It can poke your eye. It can poke is the big problem with that one.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, very pokey.

• 12:57Josh Clark?

  And then also, like eventually, if you stuff too many sheets of paper in there and they stretch out too wide, or you make a bear trap out of one, it's not going to hold any papers from that point on.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and all of this has culminated, and this is very funny to me, that companies that make these, they say they get like, you know, up to 10 letters a week still, where people are like, you know how you could fix these things.

• 13:19Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 13:21Josh Clark?

  I mean, imagine being a person who's like, I've got it. I just figured out how to keep people from poking themselves in the eye with a gem paper clip. Of course, you're going to write a letter and then you'd probably be pretty sad to get the letter back saying like, that's a great idea, but what about this problem and that problem that you just created with your stupid design? That was the standard letter that you would get back from Gem Paper Clip Company.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  I love it. Shout out a couple of other kinds of paper clips that, for me, I don't want to yuck someone's yum, but if you hand me these, I'm just going to throw this paper back in your face.

• 13:54Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  If you have the nerve to walk up with one of those spiral paper clips in the corner, the round ones. No, thank you.

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Or, I don't know if this is the official name, but I saw them called regal paper clips. They're the ones that are, they're rectangles and then dangling down in the center, which is the binder, is, uh, it looks like a couple of pool cue balls on a string.

• 14:18Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  That's the non- crude way to describe it.

• 14:23Josh Clark?

  Oh, I see.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  You know what I'm talking about, but I'll text you a picture of the regal paper clip and you'd be like, oh yeah, those things.

• 14:30Josh Clark?

  Oh, weird. Yeah, well, there are some that are improved versions, right? They just haven't caught on like the gem clip. There's one called the Gothic clip and it inverts its angles inward so that when you slide it onto the paper, there's no way to poke through the paper. And it's so good that typically it's used by archivists. If you're going to bind paper together and you're an archivist, you're probably going to use a Gothic clip. Although I would think also in that industry, you do not want to use a paper clip at all.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, you want to tie a classy ribbon through that thing.

• 15:06Josh Clark?

  They'd be like, you just carved a hole in the Declaration of Independence?

• 15:11Speaker 02

  I looked up Gothic clip and, I mean, you type those two words together, you're going to end up with a lot of weird results on the images because of Goths and stuff, like there were a lot of Goth hair clips and things like that. But was it the one that kind of is shaped like a coffin? Or were those just?

• 15:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:28Josh Clark?

  No, it has like inverted angles, yes. Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:32Josh Clark?

  The Gothic clip. I don't know, maybe that's why they call it that.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  I mean, I assume so.

• 15:38Josh Clark?

  Well, let's talk a little bit more about Johan Würle in Norway, because we should say, if you're a Norwegian listener, you're probably kind of mad at us right now for saying that he didn't invent the paperclip. It seems to be true. We're very sorry for saying that. But the reason that our Norwegian listeners are mad, everybody, is that he is a national hero in Norway for inventing the paperclip.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, didn't know paperclips were such a big deal there. But apparently, and this is super kind of fun fact, during Nazi occupation there in World War II, Norwegian citizens wore paperclips as sort of a sign of like unity and resistance.

• 16:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of the few fun facts that involve Nazis.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed.

• 16:24Josh Clark?

  There's also a 23-foot statue, seven meters for our friends outside of the US and Liberia, of a paperclip in honor of Waller. It's at the BI Business School in Oslo. The thing is, is it's not a Waller paperclip. It's a gem clip with a squared off bottom.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is very strange. And that was the same one they used on the postage stamp that they commemorated for him in Norway in 1999.

• 16:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So I guess everybody just kind of dusted the original version under the rug and they're like, here's a Waller clip.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, everybody, for joining us. We don't have anything more to say about paperclips, which means that short stuff is out.

• 17:08Speaker 06

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.