Paperclip
Norwegian inventor Johan Vaaler is often credited with the paperclip, but the gem style clip know now as the paperclip came about only because of the invention of the machine to produce them at scale.
The modern paperclip can be credited to William D. Middlebrook in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1899, when he patented a machine capable of mass producing the familiar Gem-style clip. That design is the fixed point most people mean today: it is the recognizable wire loop still used in offices, even though earlier paper-fastening patents existed.
Middlebrook’s patent did not claim the clip shape as a standalone invention; it showed a machine for mass-producing a wire clip of the general form we now call a paperclip. The shape itself was already in circulation by the early 1890s, likely first through Gem-branded clips in Britain and then in the United States, which is why the story is really about standardization as much as invention.
That is why 1899 works as the beginning of the contemporary paperclip’s story: it marks the moment the familiar form became clearly documented, manufacturable, and commercially dominant. Earlier clips matter historically, but Middlebrook’s patent led to the proliferation of the gem style clip we buy today.
The paperclip’s modern identity began with the machine to make them en-masse, though the spiral shape, among others, came before.