Fun facts about Office Supplies
Yes, they have a colourful past too!
Office supplies are commonly associated with serious (and sometimes boring) affairs like work or study that’s why they are least likely to be sources of fun and inspiration, unless throwing crumpled paper at each other during meetings and brainstorming sessions counts.
However, these seemingly unimaginative things do have colourful and interesting facts in their history. Did you know that…
The very first Sticky Notes were used as placeholder in a choir hymnal?
A scientist named Spencer Silver invented sticky notes by accident when he created an extra weak adhesive while he was trying to make an extra strong one.
However, this invention was not used until three years later when Arthur Fry, a colleague of Silver’s, used small pieces of paper to mark his place in the choir hymnal but they keep falling out of the book. So he tried using Silver’s weak adhesive on his scraps of paper and it worked! It held well to the material it was posted on, but was not strong enough to damage that material.
Different designs of paper clips have their own names? The very first one was called “The Philadelphia”. Other designs were named “The Niagara,” “The Eureka,” “Banjo Paper Clip,” and “Octo Clip”.
The very first person to use a stapler was King Louis XV of France? The first staples were allegedly made of solid gold and encrusted with precious stones.
These staples were also imprinted with the royal seal. This was a bulky machine back then. Over the years, necessity has made the stapler go through several transformations until we get the simple, compact machine we use today.
The original rubber used to make things such as the rubber band was made from the saps of trees and plants? Of course, the demand in modern industries for rubber will make it expensive, not to mention environmentally un-friendly, to keep on making rubber this way. Three-quarters of today’s rubber is already synthetic and made from crude oil.
Far from being an office supply, the first Scotch tape was originally invented for sealing cellophane food wrapping?
Its inventor, Richard Drew created it to help butchers and grocers have a sealing method that not only looks pleasing to the eye, but is moisture proof as well to help keep food safe in cellophane.
Now you can better appreciate the things on your work station not only for their functionality and design, but also their history.
This article originally appeared in: http://www.theofficesuppliessupermarket.com/articles/fun-facts-about-office-supplies
