Originally made from brass or steel wire, paperclips these days are usually made from galvanised steel wire, which is resistant to rust. The design is simple yet ingenious, and they get used for more than just clipping papers, e.g. SIM card ejecting, lock picking, bong cleaning, bookmarking, etc. And some people even make art with them.

According to the Early Office Museum, a specialised online trove that focuses on the history and evolution of office life and business technology from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the first patent for a bent wire paper clip was awarded in the United States to Samuel B. Fay in 1867. Fay received US patent 64,088 on 23 April 1867. Although functional and practical, Fay's design along with the 50 other designs patented prior to the turn of the century are not considered reminiscent of the modern paperclip design known today.

The most common type of wire paper clip still in use, the Gem paper clip, was never patented, but it was most likely in production in Britain in the early 1870s by "The Gem Manufacturing Company”. In his 1994 book The Evolution of Useful Things, Duke University Professor Henry J. Petroski refers to an 1883 article about "Gem Paper-Fasteners", praising them for being "better than ordinary pins" for "binding together papers on the same subject, a bundle of letters, or pages of a manuscript”.

The Gem-type paperclip has become a symbol of inventive design – although falsely – by its celebration as a Norwegian invention. Johan Vaaler patented his design in Germany in 1899. It featured a similar concept but was less functional and practical and, without the second bend in the wire, was more complicated to insert into the paper. His version was never manufactured and never marketed, because the superior Gem was already available.

Long after Vaaler's death his countrymen created a national myth based on the false assumption that the paperclip was invented by an unrecognised Norwegian genius. During World War II, the paperclip became a symbol of resistance in Norway, where people wore them to show opposition to Nazi occupation, symbolising unity and solidarity.

In 1989 a giant paperclip, almost 7 m (23 ft) high, was erected on the campus of a commercial college near Oslo in honour of Vaaler, 90 years after his invention was patented. But this monument shows a Gem-type clip, not the one patented by Vaaler. The celebration of the alleged Norwegian origin of the paper clip culminated in 1999 with a commemorative stamp, 100 years after Vaaler submitted his application for a German patent. [Ed: Get over it Norway!]

Paperclips might have suffered some brand damage when Microsoft decided to anthropomorphise them as “Clippy the Office Assistant” … not to mention their starring role in the “paperclip maximiser”, a thought experiment described by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003 that illustrates the existential risk that an artificial general intelligence may pose to human beings were it to be successfully designed to pursue even seemingly harmless goals and the necessity of incorporating machine ethics into artificial intelligence design.

The scenario describes an advanced artificial intelligence tasked with manufacturing paperclips. If such a machine were not programmed to value human life, given enough power over its environment, it would try to turn all matter in the universe, including human beings, into paperclips or machines that manufacture further paperclips. D’oh!
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References

wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_clip
bbvaopenmind.com/en/technology/visionaries/great-little-inventions-the-paper-clip
wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence
scientificamerican.com/article/the-paper-clip

Images

1. Modern classic paperclip
2. The paperclip patented by Johan Vaaler in 1899
3. Johan Vaaler in 1887 as a student of the Christiania University
4. Gem Paper Clip Ad from 1893
5. The giant paper clip in Sandvika, Norway. It shows the Gem, not the one patented by Vaaler.
6. Postage stamp issued in 1999 to commemorate Vaaler's paper clip. The depicted paper clip is not the one he invented.
7. Book: The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are, Henry Petroski, 1994
8. Each sword is made with needle nose pliers and two straightened paperclips. Credit: Grokostimpy on Deviantart.
9. Clippy the Office Assistant, Microsoft Office, 1997–2003
10. Nick Bostrom delivers a talk at TED in 2015
11. Paperclips maximised!