The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to Be as They Are.

by Henry Petroski

  Even though the Gem itself never seems to have been patented in its classic form, nor to have been so perfectly functioning a paper clip that inventors did not try to improve upon it, it does appear to have long ago won the hearts and minds of designers and critics as the epitome of possible solutions to the design problem of fastening papers together. For example, in his book Elegant Solutions, subtitled Quintessential Technology for a User-friendly World, Owen Edwards describes the Gem as follows:

  If all that survives of our fatally flawed civilization is the humble paper clip, archaeologists from some galaxy far, far away may give us more credit than we deserve. In our vast catalog of material innovation, no more perfectly conceived object exists.…

  With its bravura loop-within-a-loop design, the clip corrals the most chaotic paper simply by obeying Hooke’s law.…

  The Gem certainly has a pleasing form, at least before it has been used and its loops have been misshapen into what looks like a roller coaster, but that pristine form alone seems all too often to have dazzled industrial designers and critics into thinking it works better than it does. Paul Goldberger, for example, in celebrating the design of some common objects, has written:

  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 quite good-looking. There is a neatness of line to it that could not violate the ethos of any purist. One could not really improve on the paper clip, and the innumerable attempts to try—such as awkward, larger plastic clips in various colors, or paper clips with square instead of rounded ends—only underscore the quality of the real thing.

  One gets the impression that it is certainly the Gem that Goldberger has in mind as the “real thing,” and the illustration accompanying his essay confirms this. Few but inventors would argue with the qualities that are ascribed to the paper clip, and many would agree that the newer plastic clips are not just awkward but downright antifunctional (although their nonmagnetic quality may be invaluable for certain computer applications). But many inventors, and not a few users, have disagreed with the idea that “One could not really improve on the paper clip.” The “clips with square instead of rounded ends,” for example, were considered a distinct improvement by their inventor, Henry Lankenau, of Verona, New Jersey, whose patent is dated December 25, 1934. In typical fashion, but untypically naming the competition, he spelled out his device’s advantages in comparison to the failings of existing devices:

  An object of this invention is to provide a paper clip … one end portion of the clip consisting of a single loop of rectangular form and the opposite end portion consisting of a double loop and being V-shaped in lengthwise direction.

  Another object of this invention is to provide a spring wire clip having two spaced V-shaped loops at one end, the said end providing a wedge action and being adapted to be more easily applied to two or more papers than the type of clip generally known in the art as “Gem” clips and having U-shaped loops.

  Another object of this invention is to provide a spring wire clip having a rectangular end portion, the two ends of the wire terminating in a plane lying substantially in abutment with the said rectangular end so as to provide maximum gripping surface and prevent the ends of the spring wire from digging into the papers to which the clip is attached.

  Lankenau reiterated this last advantage in the course of his descriptions of the figures depicting several variations of his rectangular-ended clip. In particular, he pointed out that by being set close to the end of the clip the free ends of the wire “cannot dig in and scratch the paper as is usually the case when removing paper clips of the ‘Gem’ type having short legs which do not extend to the extreme end of the clip.” He is right in his criticism of the Gem, of course, and it is possibly because the Gem’s classic lines would be ruined by extending the ends of the wire to minimize their digging and scratching that the change has not been made. Lankenau’s paper clip, which seemed to deliver on its promise to perfect the Gem, came to be sold as the Perfect Gem, but it is generically known as a Gothic-style paper clip to contrast its features with the Gem’s Romanesque appearance. Some self-conscious users, such as librarians who must attach cataloguing material to title pages in the course of processing books, swear that the Gothic clip is much less likely to do damage upon being removed.

  The inventor Henry Lankenau found that Gem paper clips left something to be desired, in that their rounded shape made it hard to get them started onto a group of papers. Some of his sharp-angled designs, patented in 1934, even had the end of the clip bent out of its plane, to provide easier access to the papers—a feature of some paper clips today. (photo credit 4.8)

  Lankenau’s patent for the Gothic clip was assigned to the Noesting Pin Ticket Company, then of Mount Vernon, New York. This company was founded in 1913 to make a new kind of pin ticket—a size tag that contained integral pins for attachment to garments. Conventional sharp-pointed pin tickets were notorious not only for doing damage to the clothes they marked but also for pricking the fingers of salespeople and customers. The Noesting Company took its name from the new pin ticket that had rounded bent-wire ends and hence held “no sting” in store. Since the company had the wire-bending capability to make its patented pin tickets, it looked to making other products that required similar wire forming. Paper clips were a natural, and the company now claims to have made “the world’s largest selection of paper clips for over 75 years.” Visitors to the 1939 New York World’s Fair were invited to visit the company’s world headquarters and factory in the Bronx, just across the Triborough Bridge from the fair site in Flushing Meadows.

  The paper-clip pages of Noesting’s 1989 catalogue are a primer on the convoluted relation between the form and function—or, rather, functions—of even so seemingly simple an artifact as a cleverly bent piece of wire. Each different style of paper clip has some advantages over the others, of course, and no single form would appear capable of helping one corral successfully all the chaotic paper on one’s desk. Although arranged more in order of popularity than of chronology of development, the clips in Noesting’s catalogue are described by their relative advantages, which necessarily imply the disadvantages, shortcomings, and failings of the others. The familiar Gem comes first, in three sizes but without further description or qualification. (Its reputation precedes it!) The Gem is followed by the “frictioned Gem,” which has small incisions or notches cut across its length to provide “more gripping power than our standard Gems.” Next come the Perfect Gems, whose “patented design makes putting clips on paper easier,” and then the Marcel Gems, whose “corrugated surface provides maximum gripping power.” The best features these most popular paper clips possess individually are combined in the spread-legged Universal (also known as the Imperial) Clip, whose “unique design … allows for easy application with tremendous gripping power.”

  As we all know, putting even the best-looking of paper clips on cards can be tricky and, once achieved, makes a pile of them awfully bulky. Thus the Nifty Clip was “designed for holding thicker grades of papers such as card or index stock [and is] flattened to conserve card file space.” The Peerless (Owl) Clip, whose “rounded eyes prevent catching and tearing,” not only “holds more than Gems” but with “greater tension than Gems.” Ring Clips, essentially copies of the old Rinklips, are “used when holding only a few sheets,” come in five sizes, and possess the advantages of having “less thickness than Gems” and using “less space in files.” The last clip offered on the page is the Glide-on Clip, which provides a “tighter grip than Gems when holding small amounts of paper.” Clearly the Gem is the standard against which all others are compared, and the comparisons can be made successfully because, for all its “perfection” of form, the Gem does not function perfectly in every situation. Not surprisingly, it cannot be all things to all papers.

  The Noesting catalogue also offers “precious metal products,” which consist of paper clips �
�designed for the discriminating executive who wants to make a statement” through the products selected for the “office environment.” Furthermore, these clips “allow for specialty applications where standard products do not function properly.” Among the items offered are gold-plated Gems, which “will never tarnish or rust” and which provide “an ice-breaker for prospective clients.” They are “at home on mahogany desks and in boardrooms, yet can add a dash of flavor and class to even the most frugal office.” For the more (or less?) frugal office, there are stainless-steel clips, which have the distinct advantages of being nonmagnetic (“safe for use with diskettes”), extremely strong (“powerful gripping power”), and rust-proof (“perfect for archives, law firms, libraries”). There are also brass-plated models, “ideal when a gold-tone clip is desired at a more economical price.” These can be Gems, Marcel Gems, and Nifty Clips. The last, known also as Ideals, are the large angular clips that look like origami in steel, and they are sometimes called paper “clamps” because they come in sizes capable of holding as much as two inches of papers together rather effectively, something even the jumbo Gem fails to do.

  There are still other styles of paper clips offered by other companies with wire-bending experience and machinery, and the variety reminds us not only of the nonuniqueness of form for this object but also of the fact that nontechnological (and subjective) factors such as aesthetics can account for the competitive dominance of one particular form over functionally superior forms. The technological capability to mass-produce bent-wire products was essential in the process of displacing the straight pin by the paper clip; that same capability has provided the proliferation of forms that paper clips have taken. The forms that have survived and thrived have done so in part because of their economical use of wire, but that alone does not ensure success. The Queen City clip, perhaps the simplest and least expensive of designs, has neither the finished appearance of the Gem nor its functional success. Though the Gem is not so functionally perfect as industrial designers might wish, it is the compromise in form of aesthetics, economics, and function that has been embraced by an overwhelming consensus of (technologically uncritical) critics and users alike. It has thus become a standard approached with difficulty by even functionally superior forms.

  As popular as the Gem paper clip was to become, it still had its shortcomings. These included its tendency to slip and fall off the papers it held. In 1921 Clarence Collette was issued a U.S. patent for a clip with “sharply pointed projections for penetrating and engaging the sheet material.” While this did keep piles of papers intact, it also left holes in them, thus aggravating an age-old problem. Four years later Collette was issued a patent for an improved version, one with ridges that gripped paper without tearing into it. (photo credit 4.9)

  The ultimate form of the paper clip, whether embodied in the Romanesque, the Gothic, or the oddity, seemed to have become well established by the 1930s, and it has remained virtually unchallenged in the marketplace for half a century, although not because it has ceased to be a challenge to inventors. As late as 1962, Howard Sufrin could say of the firm that manufactured Steel City Gems, “We average ten letters a month from people who think they have an improvement.” All such suggestions for changing size, color, and shape may now seem futile, however, for the Gem has long been raised to design icon, and its grip on the minds of critics is no doubt more secure than its grip on their manuscripts. But of late some newer styles of paper clips have become more visible, and their popularity has introduced another complication that must be addressed by followers of form.

  One kind of newer paper clip is made of plastic-coated wire and so can come in a variety of colors. Though color-coded clips of folded flat-spring stock have long been utilized for marking records, note-cards, and files, they have not generally been used for fastening papers together. The new colored paper clips seem to be intended not only for color coding but also as a means of adding some color to drab offices and dry correspondence, or so it seems from their packaging. Whether or not these are desirable or legitimate ends to which bosses might like paper clips to be put, my experience of the functional performance of at least some of these clips has been less than satisfactory. Their rubbery plastic coating gives them a much higher coefficient of friction than metal and thus can make it literally an effort not unlike pushing an eraser to attach them to a group of papers, which can be wrinkled beyond reason in the process. Furthermore, perhaps because their wire is so much thinner to accommodate the plastic coating without making the clip seem mal-proportioned, they appear to bend out of shape much more easily than bare metal clips. Why these paper clips have gained such widespread popularity is a functional mystery but a fine example of the role aesthetics and style can play in the evolution of artifacts. Yet this is at the same time but another manifestation of form following failure, for newer, brighter models sell only because the older models fail to be perceived by some users as stylish.

  Fully plastic (and colored) paper clips were introduced in the 1950s, but never gained much popularity. These are normally of a roughly triangular or arrowhead design and are made through a molding rather than a wire-bending process. The plastic clips are generally useless for fastening reasonable amounts of paper together, and they tend to bend a few sheets beyond what should be acceptable limits. However, such arrowhead clips continue to cross office desks, and it is reasonable to ask why. Certainly they are nonmagnetic, and this may be one of their selling points. They promise not to threaten any computer data, and perhaps would be gentler on photocopying machines. No doubt the plastic clips could be made economically and in bright colors, but these are definitely not sufficient reasons to use something that simply does not work.

  The sadly performing if cheerfully colored plastic invaders of the formerly staid and steely world of paper clips may never get much of a hold on the market, unless some inventor-advocates and manufacturers can remove the serious functional shortcomings and make the plastic and plastic-coated clips work better. They may never have to work as well as a Gem or its relatives, for there may be a cost or appearance advantage to offset a more technically functional disadvantage, but the tradeoffs must be more evenly matched than they are at present if the newest entrants into the realm of paper clips are to survive as functioning artifacts. The competition is very tough, and the Gem has a solid hold on its reputation, if not on its papers.

  With paper clips, as with all artifacts, any challenge to the long-established standard will succeed only by calling attention to and overcoming the shortcomings of the Gem. The invention of a new paper clip will not occur in some amorphous dream world devoid of all artifacts save imaginative shapes and styles of bent wire or formed plastic. Rather, any new clip will come out of the crowded past of reality, which is littered with torn and jumbled papers and misshapen challengers to the Gem. Whether a new entrant is a thinner and less expensive Gem look-alike or a restyled Gem “perfected,” it will have to be hailed as a “new and improved” paper clip to unseat the acknowledged archetype.

  Engineering is invention institutionalized, and engineers engaged in design are inventors who are daily looking for ways to overcome the limitations of what already works, but not quite as well as can be imagined—or is hoped. Whether or not improved designs for computers, bridges, or paper clips come to be patented or incorporated into the technological landscape, they are always explorations of the possible paths along which technology can evolve.

  5

  Little Things Can Mean a Lot

  Many a writer on technology has been struck, in a moment of pause between sentences or an hour of distraction between paragraphs, by the extraordinariness of ordinary things. The push-button telephone, the electronic calculator, the computer on which words such as these are processed are among the more sophisticated things we use, and they can awe into silence those of us who are not electrical engineers. On the other hand, such low-tech objects as pins, thumbtacks, and paper clips are frequently and verbosely praised for
their functionality and beauty of line, but are seldom the subject of study, unless it is for the sake of learning how to market something that people use much but consider little. The most common of objects are certainly not generally thought to hold lessons for technological process, prowess, or progress.

  But if there are general principles that govern the evolution of technology and artifacts, then the principles must apply equally to the common and to the grand. And how much easier it may be to understand how technology works if we can pursue it in the context of something that is less intimidating than a system that takes teams of engineers years to develop. The individual complexity of supercomputers and skyscrapers, nuclear-power plants and space shuttles, distracts us from the common basic elements of technological development that underlie all things—the great and the small, the seemingly simple and the clearly complex. The individual designer and engineer involved in the creation of large systems is often lost in numerous management shuffles, and the story of the end product is frequently that of a major production with an anonymous if professional cast of thousands, no single one of whom is commonly known to be the designer or the engineer. But, although the often amateur actors in the little-theater pieces surrounding the design and development of many of our simple objects may also be anonymous as far as myriad consumers are concerned, the plot is usually much easier to follow.