Gem clips. Small yet big.

When you used a paper clip this morning, did you give it more than a moment’s thought? You would have opened a box of clips, picked up any one of them, and clipped your manuscript with it. You picked one of them at random – each one being as preferred as the other. Little did you know that the same clip represents a history of struggle for identity; each clip picked from among a hundred others could tell a different story.

Ask your grandmother, and she will say it was Johan Vaaler who invented the clip. True, Vaaler, a Norwegian who lived in the late 19^th century, was long known for that. He had received patents for it in Norway and USA. Encyclopedias and dictionaries since the 1950s mentioned him as the inventor of the paperclip, first in Norway and then internationally. However, this is a myth. True, he developed a version of the paperclip, but it is among many others developed around that era, and certainly not what you used this morning.

The common clip today is a “Gem” clip. We call it that just the way you call a photocopy machine, a Xerox machine. It was Gem Manufacturing, a British company, that started production in 1870s, and which holds the credit for popularizing today’s paper clip. The clip is so commonly used, that till this date we call it a “Gem” clip; obviously, a single British company does not supply it to the rest of the world! The first twist of the paperclip’s identity comes here. Nobody has heard of E. P. Bugge. Well, what we know today as the “Gem” paper clip was developed and patented Bugge of the United States, vide patent no. 3,057,027.

Vaaler’s version of the paperclip, like scores of other versions, was ineffective compared to the Gem clip. It lacked the last turn, and a subsequent long side -- making the clip highly flimsy. It would give its user a hard time trying to push it across thick paper.

Why did Vaaler become so famous then?

It was a fight for the Norwegian identity that made him a hero. The paperclip by then had become a very commonly used item, and claiming it to be an innovation from Norway gave great pride to Norwegians, especially in the aftermath of World War II. They wore it on their lapels as a symbol of resistance, when wearing flags pins was prohibited by the Nazi party.

Writers of history too did not leave out the opportunity, of building national pride in Norway by using paperclip as a symbol of their unity. There was a School Paperclip Project in Tennessee, USA, where students of a middle school collected 6 million paperclips to show solidarity against the holocaust. Soon enough, Johan Vaaler was portrayed as a hero of the Norwegian Jews – when he wasn’t even Jew. This was great attempt by war-struck Norwegians at using the paperclip for artificially constructing of national pride and identity. What is interesting is that a monument was erected in Norway commemorating Vaaler’s invention; the paperclip depicted here is in fact the Gem clip, and not Vaaler’s version at all.

A twisting and turning of identities, indeed!