As a teacher, one of the most useful tools in my office supply arsenal is the paper clip. I use clips to bind together handouts, quizzes, worksheets, etc. Paper clips keep me from losing student work and help to keep me organized. What's really fascinating about he paper clips is just how simple it is. It has survived virtually unaltered since the late 1800s. There is some confusion over who invented the traditional paper clip as it has no official patent on record. A machine used to create the Gem or Double Loop paper clip was patented in the 1890s and several other types of paper clips were patented later, but none of them as simple and effective as the Gem paper clip. Before paper clips were used, people bound papers together with string or ribbon. For a short while, after the mass production of stick pins came about, folks would pin their papers together, but this was only effective for small stacks of paper. Paper clips are extremely inexpensive, very effective at binding papers together, and can be reused over and over again. How many items do you use every day that were invented more than a hundred years ago?
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