gem clip

In the years since, the Gem clip has faced competitors offering notches, points, and eyes, but it is still the best-selling form of paper clip.

Many of these other paper clips improve on aspects of the Gem clip, but they also raise new problems.

And the Gothic clip, patented in 1933, has a pointed inner loop and longer “legs” than the Gem clip, making it less likely to bend and tear paper.

He sold the patent to the American office-supply manufacturer Cushman & Denison, who trademarked it as the Gem clip, in 1904.

But the key to the success of the Gem clip can be found in the fact that it was patented first as a mechanism: the shape, which took only three gentle bends and a snip to produce, was easy to automate cheap to produce , and the resulting form, which tidily tucks the sharp ends of the wire away, was lightweight, easy to use, and unlikely to tear the paper it secured.