Stapler

A stapler is a mechanical device that fastens sheets of paper or similar material together by driving a thin metal staple through them and folding its ends over. Rising paper use in the 19th century created demand for a fast fastening method, and while the American inventor George McGill is often credited with developing the modern stapler, patenting a brass paper fastener in 1866 and a press to insert it in 1867, the American Henry R. Heyl filed the first patent, in 1877, for a machine that could both insert and clinch a staple in a single stroke, and it was McGill's Single-Stroke Staple Press of 1879 that became the first commercially successful stapler.