The Giant Paper Clip in Norway Honours a Design Its Inventor Never Made

Outside a business school near Oslo stands a paper clip about seven metres tall, a gleaming loop of steel big enough to make anyone feel like a sheet of paper. It went up in 1989 to honour Johan Vaaler, the Norwegian engineer who is often called the inventor of the paper clip. People have been photographed beside it for decades, and it makes a cheerful landmark. Look closely at its shape, though, and you will spot the twist in this story.

The giant clip has two loops, one tucked inside the other, exactly like the clip in your desk drawer. That design is known as the Gem. Vaaler's clip did not look like that at all.

What the patents actually say

Vaaler really did patent a paper clip. His United States patent, number 675,761, was filed on 2 January 1901 and granted on 4 June 1901. It describes a piece of springy wire bent to a rectangular, triangular or otherwise shaped hoop, with the ends lying side by side so that sheets of paper can be pushed between them. It was a neat idea, but it lacked the second full loop that lets a Gem grip a stack firmly and slide on without snagging.

Meanwhile, the double loop was already at work. Two years earlier, in November 1899, William Middlebrook of Waterbury, Connecticut, was granted a patent for a machine that made wire paper clips automatically, so that offices could bind papers together in place of pins. The Gem clip itself was never patented, and it is thought to have been made first in Britain by the Gem Manufacturing Company, which gave it its name. Nobody can point to the day it was invented, which is rather fitting for something so modest.

1. Nov 1899 A machine for making wire paper clips is patented in the United States
2. June 1901 Johan Vaaler's own paper clip is granted a US patent
3. Autumn 1940 Students at Oslo University wear paper clips on their lapels
4. 1989 A giant paper clip goes up in Vaaler's honour

What people often get wrong

The popular version says that the paper clip is a Norwegian invention. The truth is gentler and more interesting: around 1900 several inventors were trying to replace the pin, and Vaaler was one of them. His design was never manufactured or sold, and his patents eventually lapsed. The clip that won, the Gem, came from somewhere else and has no known inventor at all.

How a clip became a symbol

So why did Norway take Vaaler to heart? Part of the answer lies in the Second World War. In the autumn of 1940, students at Oslo University began wearing paper clips on their lapels as a quiet, peaceful sign of unity and pride, as if to say that they were holding together. A tiny piece of bent wire was easy to carry and hard to object to, and the belief that it was a Norwegian invention made it feel all the more fitting.

After the war, the story of the Norwegian inventor grew with each retelling, until it earned a monument. The sculptors chose the shape everyone recognised, which is how a tribute to Vaaler ended up as a giant portrait of somebody else's paper clip. It is still a lovely thing to stand beside. Just remember, as you hold your papers together tomorrow morning, that the little double loop is an orphan, and a very hard-working one.