Stapler

A stapler is a mechanical device that joins pages of paper or similar material by driving a thin metal staple through the sheets and folding the ends.

Their primary operating function is to join large numbers of paper sheets together in rapid succession.

In 1866, George McGill received U.S. patent 56,587[5] for a small, bendable brass paper fastener that was a precursor to the modern staple.

He showed his invention at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and continued to work on these and other various paper fasteners throughout the 1880s.

In 1877 Henry R. Heyl filed patent number 195,603 for the first machines to both insert and clinch a staple in one step,[7] and for this reason some consider him the inventor of the modern stapler.

This device weighed over two and a half pounds and loaded a single 1⁄2-inch-wide (13 mm) wire staple, which it could drive through several sheets of paper.

The first published use of the word "stapler" to indicate a machine for fastening papers with a thin metal wire was in an advertisement in the American Munsey's Magazine in 1901.

[4] In the early 1900s, several devices were developed and patented that punched and folded papers to attach them to each other without a metallic clip.

Accordingly, staples do not have sharper edges exposed and lead to flatter stacking of paper – saving on filing and binder space.

Permanent fastening binds items by driving the staple through the material and into an anvil, a small metal plate that bends the ends, usually inward.

Clinches can be standard, squiggled, flat, or rounded completely adjacent to the paper to facilitate neater document stacking.

Stapleless staplers, invented in 1910, are a means of stapling that punches out a small flap of paper and weaves it through a notch.

A more recent alternative method avoids the resulting hole by crimping the pages together with serrated metal teeth instead.