If you work on paper, you need to keep papers together. This is why a number of typewriter enthusiasts have also acquired a variety of staplers. I’m not a stapler collector, but I’ve been cleaning my study and I ran across a few that may be of interest.
This very pretty and excellent Aceliner turned up in the local St. Vincent DePaul store. I also have a staple remover that matches its marbled plastic.
I’d forgotten that I own these midgets. I should bring them to class when papers are due and students inevitably ask if I have a stapler.
Another midget is this Swingline Tot 50 which has been with me since I was under ten years old. A box of staples for it has also survived, somehow, all these years!
Still older is my father’s stapler. It looks like it’s from the 1940s. The base is Bakelite. He scratched his initials on the bottom. I can’t see a maker’s name on this stapler; does anyone know what it is?
Finally, this is not really a stapler but a Bump Paper Fastener, patented in 1914. It cuts a tab out of the paper and folds it into the cut.
Here’s a video that shows how it works.
I believe devices like this are still made in Japan and are popular there.
I know Sean up in YYC has some interesting staplers too. Who else?
me! :D
https://munk.org/typecast/category/stapler-of-the-week/
I used to have a staple remover identical to that in the first photo — I'm not certain it's not still rattling around a drawer or a box somewhere. (For the past several years at least, I've been removing staples, when necessary, by prying them open with my 1986 Swiss Army Spartan knife). My stapler is an olive-green Swingline mini with the logo almost worn away from use.
Great series!
It is good when useful things are used.
Dear Mr Polt – I recently sent Joe Van Cleave some samples of an old fashioned alternative to staples called a "treasury tag", a thing that I use regularly, and to my surprise he made a video about them and read my letter. You might be interested to see it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMx57tH0OUY
Thank you for all your great work!
Thanks — to both you and Joe! I was not familiar with treasury tags. Interesting that Churchill was such a fan.
RP, that little black stapler is a Hotchkiss. Later years it was a Model 122 but the earlier version may have a different number.
That's good to know. Thanks, Sean!
I’ve heard a few times that any typewriter collector who has been at it for some time becomes either an open or closet stapler collector. I wouldn’t call myself a collector of staplers either but I have over twenty of them now, and I do look for them when I am shopping antiques…
Twenty? Face it, buddy, you’re a stapler collector! :)