Stapler

Open a stapler and find the four parts McGill claims: lever, guided chamber, spring-returned plunger, clinching anvil. Sketch them.

Examine the metal plate the staple closes against. The two shallow curved channels are the clinching anvil. Draw their shape with the magnifying glass.

Cut a 40 mm length of wire and bend it into a U with 10 mm legs. This is your staple.

Push the staple through five sheets against a soft cardboard backing. The legs splay randomly. Record what happens.

Cut a 40 × 20 mm card and score two shallow curved channels 12 mm apart, curving inward.

Now the legs follow the channels and fold inward. Compare with step 4.

Glue a dowel upright on the board as the pillar. Hinge a 150 mm card lever at its top.

Roll a card tube just wider than your staple and glue it vertically under the lever's free end. The staple must slide without tipping.

Cut a stiff card strip that slides inside the chamber and contacts the staple crown.

Fit a light compression spring between the lever and the base so the plunger lifts itself after each stroke. McGill claims a spiral spring for exactly this.

Glue the card anvil directly beneath the chamber. Alignment is everything — a 2 mm offset makes it fail.

Load a staple, place five sheets, press the lever once. Drive and clinch should happen together.

Staple 5, 10, 20 and 40 sheets. Record where the clinch fails. McGill's patent includes an adjustable anvil height for precisely this reason.

US 212,316, George W. McGill, granted 18 February 1879, filed 9 January 1879. The granted title is “Improvement in devices for inserting metallic staples in papers”.

McGill's earlier patents matter to the story: US 56,587 (24 July 1866) for a small bendable brass paper fastener, and US 67,665 (13 August 1867) for a press to insert them. He exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and took a first prize medal. The 1879 patent is the point where fastener and press become one single-stroke machine.

What it competed with. The paper clip (see the linked blueprint) solves the same problem reversibly and without deforming the paper; the staple solves it permanently and far more securely. Neither replaced the other, which is why both are on your desk today.

One honest limit on the popular story: “the first stapler” is a contested title. Devices for driving fasteners into paper existed earlier in Europe, and an ornate machine reputedly made for King Louis XV is often cited, though its documentation is thin. What US 212,316 can be said to be, precisely, is the first commercially successful single-stroke staple press — insert and clinch in one motion.