David Walker's Paper Clip Collection

beautiful

I sometimes wonder what an archaeologist of the future would make of our rubbish and ephemera. A collection like this, for my imagined archaeologist, would be a rare treasure. What would they make of my uncle’s marble collection: glass spheres in a leather pouch? Money? Unknown religious purposes?

This reminded me of The Evolution of Useful Things [1] by Henry Petroski, which in one chapter explores the incremental development of the paper clip from its origin as a straight pin that pierced the set of papers.

An aspect of paper clip design that’s easy to overlook is that you also need to be able to manufacture them at scale, so the machinery to produce them also needs to evolve with the overall form of the product.

[1] https://ia600104.us.archive.org/11/items/pdfy--rXmwRDB5uzq5M...