Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Paperclips

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Alex Schmidt and his *new co-host* Katie Goldin take a look at why paperclips are secretly incredibly fascinating -- on our first-ever episode on the Maximum Fun podcast network! Hooray!!!Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Paperclips. Known for looping. Famous for Microsoft Office-ing. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why paperclips are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host. Wow. My co-host, Katie Golden. Hello, Katie. Yay! I'm just, I love how that sounds. Co-host. Co-host Katie Golden. We should, yeah, I didn't get you a desk plate or anything. I should have. Come on, get it together. Yeah, no, I am so, so excited to be here. I'm thrilled you are here. Yeah. And I hope folks caught the mini announcement episode that went up

a few days ago. If you didn't, that's fine. The short version is a bunch of huge news about this show that is just fully thrilling and big upgrades. And I'm like, I'm slightly bouncing up and down, but not too much because I'm an audio pro. I don't want to mess up my angle on the microphone. Right. But I'm bouncing in a very controlled way about it. Sort of your eyes are jiggling. Your eyeballs are sort of jiggling around in their sockets. Yeah. That is the podcaster way of showing excitement without messing up the audio. I'm being a total pro. My head has done the movie scanners. It has fully exploded, but I keep talking. I keep talking. I don't let it mess it up. Like we talk out of stumps in this industry. And here's what my stump is thrilled about. The short version is SifPod is now part

of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. I hope you know what that is. There have been many hosts and people from that network guesting on this show before. It's just humongously great that we can be part of it. Other news is that there is now a Discord for you to hang out in for this show, especially if you support this show. And other news is thanks to this transition, thanks to this great thing, I'm able to make Katie Golden my co-host every week. That's just a full upgrade. Great thing for the show.

I'm so excited about it. We are so fancy right now. We're both wearing full power suits. Yeah. Shoulder pads that like can hold several glasses. Just, just incredible, incredible shoulder pads. I could take off like an airplane right now. Incredible, incredible shoulder pads. I could take off like an airplane right now. This is totally my fault because I've been watching weird science fiction lately. But when you said power suit, I thought of like a mech suit, like all mechanical and in the future. But also 80s suits with big shoulder pads.

You know what? We're wearing both. We're just really stocked up. We're really sweaty. It's going great. The shoulder pads transform into swords. Oh yeah. There you go. I'm also realizing Sigourney Weaver has worn both things famously in movies. So I should ask her how to do it, how to pull it off. Yeah. Call her up. What if I was like, and also Sigourney Weaver's on the show, but not important. Moving on. It

doesn't matter. It's a small potatoes. Hi, I'm Sigourney Weaver. That's about all I know how to say, like Sigourney Weaver. There's aliens. I'm also an avatar. That's it. That's all I know. That is stuff she would say. Okay. I guess it's her. That is things. That is movies she's been in. I guess it's her. That is things. That is movies she's been in. Well, folks, we get a lot more into that in the announcement post and also, of course, on Patreon and on Discord going forward.

A lot more about that, too. Right now, I want to get straight into an amazing episode for you because this is an amazing new episode about paperclips, a topic suggested by listener and supporter Xander. Thank you so much for that idea. And I always start by asking folks their relationship of the topic or opinion of it. So Katie, how do you feel about paperclips? It looks like you're trying to start a podcast. Do you need help with that? Oh, we're going to talk about him. I don't want to keep people in suspense. He's going down, folks. Clippy! Yes.

Yeah, I remember Clippy fondly. I did not hate him as other people seem to have. I thought he was cute. I also liked paperclips growing up. They were my favorite toy. No, but I did love to make paperclip chains. I felt very cool to create a necklace out of paperclips would put those things right on, or you get a magnet and you

create a paperclip tower. Um, yeah. So I would say I have a good relationship with paperclips. Oh yeah. Also picking locks. Uh, we had doors in our house where it was just one of these like little pinhole locks, like a little push lock. And you just put the paper clip through the pinhole and you pick the lock on the door. I was an unstoppable force. Oddly, I have saved lock picking for the bonus show. Wow. Maybe because it's crimes.

But also there's like more to it than I expected, especially legally. You gotta pay a premium for crimes. legally. You got to pay a premium for crimes. I feel like you have a deeper relationship to this topic than me because I've never been a big messing with them person, never actually picked a lock in my life. And I, in the run up, realized I don't keep these around. Like if I have a couple of pieces of paper, I either put them in a folder or I just like stack them very messily somewhere in a way that is not good filing, but it's what I do. Oh, Alex. Geez.

No wonder you didn't get me my name plate yet. I need, oddly, I need a, some kind of office assistant. If only there was a way to magically summon someone helpful. Maybe not a human. Maybe a different being with eyes. I am curious about Clippy's anatomy. Because is the hole in his paper clippiness, is that his mouth? Yeah, they never really clarify it.

We'll talk in a sec about how they, in general, didn't think Clippy through, I feel. For being something they blasted to basically everybody using a computer in the 1990s, did not plan it, did not think it out. Yeah. And is that little thing, the end of the paper clip, is that his hand? Is it his tail? Is it his butt? I don't know. It's a mystery. Like, is it his butt? I don't know. It's a mystery. The way intellectual property works, I feel like we're two seconds away from the clippy CGI animated children's movie. And that'll be their task. They have to figure it out. Yeah. The clippy animated extended universe.

And let's talk about him and more. And hello and welcome if this is your first episode of the podcast ever. And on every episode, we have a couple big takeaways. Before that, our first fascinating thing about the topic. It's a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called... I can buy myself numbers. Write my name in the stats. Talk to my podcast for hours.

Say numbers followed by stats. Talk to my podcast for hours. Say numbers followed by stats. Beautiful. You can't see me, but I'm holding up a phone with like a picture of a lighter on it because I don't actually have a lighter. It looks like you're attending a concert, right? It just starts talking. And thank you, Lena Dongen, for submitting that name. We have a new name for this segment every week. And it's a fun thing. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit yours to sifpod at gmail.com or through the special Discord channel for this. New thing, Discord channel for stats and numbers songs. Really test Alex's singing range. That's what I want to hear. Is this because you're based in Italy, the home of opera? That's probably why.

That's right. The most challenging singing there is. Bugs Bunny was right. He should have messed with that guy. I agree. Constantly having to replace glasses because of all the opera, all the sopranos. I haven't been able to drink a single glass of wine in peace. The first number here, this number is an estimate, but it's amazing. The first number is one out of ten. One out of ten.

That is the estimated amount of paper clipsips that at some point get used to clip together paper. And this is a market research estimate. The source is an amazing book. It's a key source for the episode. It's called The Evolution of Useful Things. That's a book by Dr. Henry Petrosky, who is a professor of both engineering and history at Duke University. Go Blue Devils. But Petrosky cites a 1958 market research study done by the Steel City Gem Paperclip Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And they claim that only one out of 10 paperclips ultimately get used to hold pieces of paper together. You know, the famous use of paperclips. How would they, how did they even study that?

I think it was a lot of surveys, like customer surveys, because they're already shipping so many clips they can work some of that into. Shipping so many clips. We're shipping mad clips over here. Yeah. What are the rest of them used for? Do they kind of sit around and gather dust or are there other people making necklaces out of paperclips like I am? Both. Both things.

Their other amazing estimate here is that three out of ten paperclips get lost and not used. It's just like our idol and not doing anything. They kind of zoop into the paperclip dimension. Right. Basically, it feels like they're dropping into a Stranger Things upside down where they just stop existing. Yeah. The biggest reason for this survey was to find out how many different things paperclips get used for. And Steel City Gem, they found that their customers use these for, and some of these I don't support, but they use them for toothpicks. No. Yeah, I don't support it. Fingernail cleaners.

No. Ear cleaners. Super do not support this. Oh, no. No. Very no on that one. Whoa. No, no, no, very no on that one. Whoa, no, no, no.

I'm not a doctor, but absolutely don't do that. I feel 100% confident telling you that. Another use they found was makeshift fasteners for pantyhose and for bras and for blouses. Make sense? That's fine. Just don't stick them in your ears. Yeah, this list was ordered in a horrifying way. The rest are pretty good. I'm not okay. Yeah, we'll breathe.

We'll cut out a lot of meditating from the edit. The next use here is clasps for neckties. Make sense? I've never done that, but it makes sense. Yeah. And then substitute poker chips have definitely done that. Yeah. And then substitute board game markers have done that.

I guess I'm disorganized. I lose things. And then they also found decorative paperclip chains like you're doing. Oh, okay. It's a big use and uses, you know, a high quantity too. And then what's this? It's a paperclip chain coming out of my ear. Everyone walks out of the magic castle where you're doing your magic show.

Like, this was horrifying. I'm out. Oh, it has an ear cleaner. Do you think they're using, like, at least, like, the rounded edge or like the like the pointy edge my my prediction is if you're willing to risk using this in general you're going the scary way i don't they didn't say for sure yeah no you're not even supposed to put ear cleaners in your ears like q-tips right yeah yeah people freak out if you do that. So this piece of metal, forget it. Yeah. It's just like, well, got to clean out my ear by stabbing my eardrum with a hard piece of metal.

Right. And then when people criticize you, you can't hear anymore. The joke's on them. You lost your hearing. It's tinnitus, but it's like actual tin paperclips inside your ears rattling around. Don't do that. And the other other use they found is weapons, especially people launching them with rubber bands. You know, like child weapons, not for wars and stuff. Okay.

I thought of someone like sharpening the end into like a tiny shiv. I don't want to give people ideas, but. And then Petrosky also writes about a like unrecorded but other major use of paperclips, which is something he calls tactile doodling, which is a name he coined for the activity of just bending paperclips into various shapes to give your hands something to do in a meeting or something. That's a huge use of them as well. God, I wish I knew this word, tactile doodling. It's like, are you paying attention? Yes, I'm just tactile doodling. Thank you for checking in. Your confused boss is just like, you're promoted, I guess? That sounds great. That sounds very

advanced. Those are smart words that only come from fancy people. Yeah. I guess you're the boss now. Yeah. Switch chairs. You're at the front. That's interesting. I mean, I do.

I do think I am a tactile doodler. So, yeah. Also with not only paper, like I like to unbend the paper clips into like until it's unrecognizable, just sort of disfiguring them and then trying to put them back. But it never quite goes back right. It's the tragedy of it. Yeah, and paperclips, if you bend them only a little bit, they do the job of clipping something. And they can also be totally turned into something new, which is fun as an item. Not every item has both those lives in it. Yeah. And speaking of Office stuff, the next number here is about a villain we've been speaking

about because the number is 2007. 2007 is the year when Microsoft fully removed the Clippy digital assistant from the Microsoft Office suite of programs. They introduced Clippy in 1996. Public reaction was strongly negative. They did a few redesigns. They removed Clippy from the default settings in 2002. In 2002, you had to start opting in if you wanted Clippy, but people still just weren't into it. And then in 2007, they deprecated Clippy, removed him.

Oh, poor little Clippy. The world just wasn't ready for you, bud. Just wasn't. Yeah. You know, sometimes the sweetest princes are born into a world that just isn't ready to receive their love. Wow. That was Shakespeare, I think. That was Shakespeare, I think.

His famous play, Macclip, about the clip Prince of Scotland, who was a tragedy. Yeah, I agree that I didn't hate him or nothing. I feel like it was kind of an in-group thing. Like it was a way of signaling that you were cool, but also worked in an office. He wasn't like great, but also if people weren't around for it, the late 1990s, everybody just got very upset with Microsoft for this digital assistant on top of some other like antitrust stuff, I guess. But that was, that was the big problem with Microsoft. Yeah. For those of you who aren't ancient like us, it was a little animated paper clip. He was like 3D, you know, not great 3D. And he was like sitting on a piece of yellow notepad paper or something. And he'd sort of pop up as you're

typing in Word and go like, it looks like you're trying to draft an essay. Do you need help with that? And you could click some prompts and it would like help you with formatting or spelling maybe. I don't remember exactly what he did, but people found his sort of excited demeanor and intrusiveness to be annoying. But I think he was just trying to help you ungrateful fools, sort of like a Jesus figure. Clippy died for our typos. That will be the trailer of this podcast. We're going to pull that out. We're going to send it to the press.

Yeah. As you say that, I'm realizing I never took Clippy up on the offer. Yeah. He was always offering help, but I never tried it. Maybe it's great. Maybe it's really useful. I don't know. I feel like I must have at some point just be like, okay, Clippy, today's your day.

Let's do what you want to do. Click yes to everything. And you just start mailing people letters that say like, send all your money to Clippy. He needs your social security. And you're start mailing people letters that say, like, send all your money to Clippy. He needs your social security. And you're just fishing. Clippy is Lord. Clippy is life. Clippy also, when it comes to like, why was he unpopular?

It seems like there's at least two reasons coming from Microsoft's approach to launching this character. There's an amazing piece about Clippy's history for The Atlantic. It's by Myers Robinson. And they say that Clippy suffered from a poorly chosen purpose because according to Microsoft employee Chris Pratley, Clippy was, quote, optimized for first use. But if you think about that, optimized for first use, that means they designed clippy

to be fun like the first time primarily and not fun all of the hundreds of other times you're going to open microsoft word like they just wanted to like make you giggle once rather than making an assistant that was not so intrusive and not something that constantly pops in while you're trying to do your work. I see. So it's a paperclip that's fun for a night out, but not a paperclip you'd take home to see your mother. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very clear answer in the F marry kill. There we go. That's clean. The F marry kill game. I guess I'm marrying Siri or something. I don't know who.

The other thing with his origin is that apparently there was specifically pushback from women at the time. Really? Because according to my former Microsoft executive, Roz Ho, who describes herself as usually the only female executive in large meetings at Microsoft. They did like a bunch of market research and focus group testing before they launched Clippy. They were like showing them to people and showing test prototypes and stuff. But they felt that Clippy and the other office characters were, quote, too male and that they were leering at them, end quote. And then Roz Ho describes... He did waggle his eyebrows sometimes

in what could be described as a flirtatious manner, but personally, I, you know, I was into that, you know what I mean? Like, get a little wink-wink as you're trying to write an essay on, like, the fall of Rome and, you know, it's...

you're trying to get through this and then you, you know, you get a little flirtation. That's, that's all right. Yeah. I, it's sort of a, one article I saw described it as Groucho Marx eyes and eyebrows and Groucho Marx is so like flirty in a way where it is like kind of OK. But if you're if you're dealing with it. He's a sex symbol. It's all right to say it. He's a sex symbol.

But if he was like any less fun, it's it's creepy. So it's it's a fine line. And Clippy was on, I guess, the wrong side for many people. I see. I think he just needs a rebrand. I think he needs to be voiced by Chris Pratt, put in a movie, and he's got to save the document from the evil, bad formatting. And, you know, it's just, it's your standard Chris Pratt kind of film where it's just Chris

Pratt going, I'm clippy and would you have believed it that I'm going to save the world? Well, I never thought I would. And then he goes and saves the world. And there you go. People love Clippy after that. I hope Chris Pratt's Mario voice is, hi, it's Mario. And then his Clippy voice is, it's a me, a Clippy. Then that's where he does it.

Just completely mixes it up. He's saving it, a Clippy. Then that's where he does it. Just completely mixes it up. He's saving it up for Clippy. Yes, we think that he only does his voice for every animated role, but maybe he's just saving it all for Clippy. Yeah. Yo prendo y carte. There you go. And the other, there's a bonus number here about Clippy. The number is the year 2021. Because in 2021, Microsoft soft launched some return of Clippy. I'm not joking about it. It's not a Chris Pratt movie we're making up.

They did two things. They added a sticker pack to the Microsoft Teams video conferencing software, where it's a sticker pack of a bunch of clippings. Oh, yes, of course. And then more significantly, they changed the paperclip emoji art on Microsoft's software and devices and everything. Like super short version, if people don't know, there's one emoji keyboard run by one org, but then all the tech companies pick their own specific art for the emojis. And since 2021, according to Emojipedia, if you use Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Windows, like the operating system, if you type a paper

clip emoji, it looks like Clippy specifically. You don't just get a regular paper clip. Well, I guess you can take the Clippy out of Microsoft, but you can't take the Microsoft out of Clippy? Yeah, pretty much. I guess you just can't take the Clippy out of Microsoft. Yeah, we're like, eh, what do you do? And the next number here is going to jump into a whole different topic because this topic is surprisingly World War II heavy. There is going to be a lot of World War II stuff. Total surprise, I feel. But the next number is the date, November 16th of 1945. November 16th, 1945. That is the date

when a group of 88 German scientists arrived in the United States that was under a program codenamed Operation Paperclip. I don't know if folks have heard of that. But Operation Paperclip. It turns out it's not just a codename. There were actual paperclips involved. What? Yeah, I couldn't. That was the part I decided to try to find out because the codename is whatever.

But there's actual paperclips involved in this process. Okay. Yeah. Wow. I had no idea about that. The part I had known is that in Smithsonian Magazine's one source here, they say that Operation Paperclip was a top secret U.S. program where the U.S. and also the Soviets were both interested in German scientific talent, even in cases where the talent had been really prominent Nazis and really involved in terrible Nazi things. And so the U.S. did an operation called Operation Paperclip to basically launder that talent. They secreted German scientists into the U.S. and in exchange for some or total amnesty for their crimes, they worked on scientific programs for the U.S. In in exchange for some or total amnesty for their crimes, they worked on scientific

programs for the U.S. In particular, rocketry was the big one. Yeah, I feel like if only that tweet had existed back then, like you absolutely do not got to hand it to the Nazis. Yeah, Drill showed us the way on that. Yeah. I'll link that if people don't know that Twitter character. under a different code name. It was called Operation Overcast, which is a random word. And according to Air Force Magazine, there was immediate post-war pushback against the U.S. doing this kind of program. And so the U.S. just did it more secretly. They were like, okay, we're making a top, top secret. Okay, we hear you loud and clear. We'll just do it, but it's a secret now.

Yeah, like, it's cool. We won't tell you. Also, forget I said that. We'll keep recruiting Nazi scientists, but just more quietly, more subtly. Yeah. Poor panache. Jesus. It's so dark.

Yeah, I'm also going to link, there's a piece from WBUR Boston, which is an amazing public media station. And they have stuff about secret boats that brought them to Boston Harbors, Outer Islands, and then to Long Island and an old fort. And there was a lot of clandestine moving people. But another clandestine element was that the War Department only let a few staff members know what was going on. The War Department only let a few staff members know what was going on. And according to Air Force Magazine, as those few staff who knew about this were going over the dossiers for Nazi scientists, what they did to like mark the most important scientists to specifically put into the program was stick an extra paperclip onto the dossier. Because it looks normal. It doesn't look like anything, but it was a secret code like within the offices to say Werner Von Braun put him in, this other guy, forget it. Not important. Oh, maybe we're, God, I hope Clippy wasn't involved in this because we're going to have

to cancel him. I did. I did basically establish that Clippy is sexist, and now we're also wondering if he was involved in crimes. This is good. It looks like you're trying to integrate Nazi scientists into your research programs. Do you need help with that? And then you just shut him up by attaching him to the dossier. He's like, oh, he can't talk. I wonder if he can talk when he's attached to stuff.

We'll find out in the movie, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, because is that his mouth? Like what part of it is like, is his whole body like an intestine? Like, where does where does the stuff go in? Where does it come out? Right. Oddly, odd segue here back to World War Two.

There's a whole next story here that i find very inspiring but the next number here is over 29 million over 29 million that is the number of paper clips donated to a holocaust memorial and overall memorial to the war created by middle school students in whitwell, Tennessee, which is in the southern part of central Tennessee. RoadsideAmerica.com has pictures of it. But this was a sort of classroom project that grew into kind of one of the more significant and interesting Holocaust memorials in the United States. Oh, interesting.

What did they do with the paperclips? They were initially only aiming to collect 6 million paperclips to represent the estimated 6 million Jewish people killed in the Holocaust. This started in 1998 because a few faculty at Whitwell started teaching just like an additional class to eighth graders at the Whitwell Middle School to just educate them about the Holocaust. And the students said, hey, can we like make a creative memorial and paperclips are cheap, they're easy, people can just send them to us. And so these middle school students and two teachers helping them, they requested from just like the local public in Whitwell and Tennessee there,

hey, please send us paperclips to make a memorial, like the paperclips represent people. And it went great. They got so much attention and so much support. They received over 29 million donated paperclips. And on top of that, the kids received an actual railway boxcar used by the Nazis. It was shipped from modern Germany all the way to Tennessee. And so now today there is a memorial in Whitwell, Tennessee, which is that boxcar containing 11 million of the donated paperclips to represent the estimated 11 million total victims of the Holocaust, not just Jewish people. But it's now one of the most significant Holocaust memorials in the

southern U.S. And I'm also going to link an editorial in the main Nashville, Tennessee newspaper called The Tennessean, because they point out that in other parts of central Tennessee, there are school districts banning books about the Holocaust, such as the graphic novel Mouse. And so they argue that this memorial is like even more important now because that's not going to get banned. It's going to keep standing and keep letting people know this event happened. Yeah, no, that's very, it's very disturbing to me, the banning of books about the Holocaust. The idea that it's offensive to teach kids about an atrocity. It's a really, really horrifying thing. But yeah, no, that is really lovely.

I'm so happy they were able to set up that memorial. Yeah, and it's really clever. It's really memorable. It's something that people can support without breaking the bank. I feel like throughout reading about paperclips, learning about paperclips, their modern cheapness is just really powerful.

It really makes them something that can be everywhere and be all sorts of things. It's cool. Yeah. And that's the rest of the stats and numbers. And then from here, we have a couple big takeaways. There will be more World War II stuff, amazingly. I can't believe how much this has to do with World War II. But we can go

from here into the first main takeaway for the show. Takeaway number one. Before we had paper clips, people spent centuries struggling to clasp their papers with pins. It's a whole different world back then. It was hard to wrap my head around it but in order for people to invent the modern paper clip they needed to make a few leaps in wire making and also in understanding how to make wires bend and flex just the right way and before all those advances people primarily use stuff like straight metal pins to put a couple of pages together just kind of like stabbed it through the papers one way and then stabbed it back again through the other way.

Yeah. It reminds me of working with clothes and for like pinning stuff for selling. They would do that with pages and it's way better to have a paperclip. It isn't a point that can stab you so much. Yeah. I just imagine people for like centuries, just like, ow. Millennia of ow, ow, ow throughout all the history of writing and documents. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Here's, here's my pamphlet and just stab you in the, in the finger. Cause I showed Katie a picture and I'll link it for you folks of one set of documents with one of these pins. And like she said, it's just you punch it through and then punch it back through the other way.

And so one side of your paper has a metal point in it. And that's, you know, not ideal. And this takeaway is pretty much the fast entire history of paperclips. And there's a couple of key sources. It's the book The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petrosky from The Numbers, and another book called The Perfection of the Paperclip by design blogger James Ward, and then online resources from the U.S. National Archives. The nitty gritty of paperclip history, you have to initially start with paper. Because, oh yeah.

Right. That makes some sense, yeah. Nobody wants to like paperclip leaves together. A really busy gorilla, like I got to put my leaves together for the meeting, yeah. A very, very hairy looking tree shrew shuffling through leaves, yeah. Now, you have shown me on your podcast creature feature some very cute shrew shuffling through leaves yeah now you have shown me on your podcast creature feature some very cute shrews so now i am enjoying that mental picture oh yeah oh yeah i'm just gonna take a break do that but yeah so i yeah i guess it's like yeah so paper comes first obviously and then it takes like quite a while after we have paper to figure out how to

bend metal. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. So the fast history of paper is that the first modern style paper making where you're turning like the pulp of plants into paper that begins in China just about 2000 years ago. And then Henry Petrosky says that technology spread west very, very slowly. You have Europeans start to write most of their stuff on that kind of paper starting around the 1200s AD, so more than a thousand years after China develops it. And in all those places, they also tend to develop systems for binding together a huge amount of paper. Like they spend more time on that technology than how to bind together a couple pieces of paper. Right. Because at that point, why even bother?

Precisely. Yeah. Because like book binding is very hard to do. But for a religious text like the Bible or another huge stack of paper that's important, it's kind of worth the labor. But for a couple pieces of paper, they said, I don't know, put a pin through it or something. Yeah. I guess that'd be like a very concise religion if it was just two pages, like on one page is God and on the second one says, hi. A priest is like, okay okay everybody open your memos we're gonna um who can do the rundown of the lord just quick rundown uh yeah because uh another thing they did and apparently they did

this at varying levels of quality was people would take a knife and then if they just had a few pages they would cut a hole through the top of those few pages and then tie a loop of string through it or a loop of ribbon, which works like pretty good, honestly. And Petroski says there's still archives he's been to where there's documents put together that way. Like it works okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's better than getting stabbed in the finger. And so in general, people were like more focused on really innovating stuff like bookbinding. And then this kind of came later. Then the most common approach soon became a straight sharp metal pin, especially in Europe. And it would be the same kind of pins used for sewing and fabric applications or else stuff that was like a tiny nail. And also archivists do not

like this because obviously the pins damage the paper. It's also easy to stick yourself. Yeah. You'd get some kind of like super old tetanus thing, reintroduce it. It's, it's tetanus, but the U is written like a V, like those old Roman writings. Then your doctor is like, hail citizen and opens a scroll to tell you. But otherwise it's tennis. It's the same. Yeah. And then there's also this almost a separate thing, but just kind of mind bending.

Henry Petrosky says that for multiple centuries, the whole European economy was surprisingly dependent on pins and like getting metal pins, having metal pins in your household. Apparently, in the Middle Ages, Britain experienced pin shortages and the government started passing laws controlling the sale and distribution of pins to try to stabilize the supply. stabilize the supply i don't i don't mean to make light of the pin shortage but uh it's uh you know like it's so weird yeah yeah it's yeah like there were households buying humongous volumes of them and before the industrial revolution so like the speed that people were hand making and smithing and milling pins was not fast enough. Just imagining a smithy like on a forge, like individually hammering little pins. Yeah, it's so silly. But it was like big. The other thing he says, and this is a pretty old fashioned term. I don't know if people have heard the term pin money. I've only heard it from like one very old relative. But pin money is the concept of a little bit of extra money for something discretionary. And there's like a feminine vibe to it, too. It's like have some pin money to get like a lipstick or something. That's the modern meaning of that. But apparently that term pin money comes from the time in the past when pin money was the crucial funds that a home would save up to purchase the super necessary pins that are expensive and hard to get. And it was a totally different meaning at the time.

The pins budget. Yeah. Yeah, it was like rent, food, pins, and then other stuff. Can little johnny's rickets but because we got to save up for those pins yeah totally different world i just it anyway the past is so weird um yeah and then this finally changed with the industrial revolution like especially in the 1800s mass production got better and better. So when it came to pins, there were... When we finally learned, we could use the tiny hands of children to make pins. Oh, right. I just celebrate child labor the rest of the show.

Like, ah, it's great. But yeah, because in especially the 1800s, they built machines where you could churn out pins by taking a piece of steel wire and then you chop the wire into pieces and shape each piece into a pin. And so suddenly pins were plentiful and a lot cheaper. It was easier. And then once they finally had that like 1800s technology, they said, now that we've mastered pins, can we make a purpose-built fastener for pieces of paper? Now that we have finally solved the pin problem, what's next? Step one, stab the paper. Step two, what can we do other than stabbing the paper? Shoot the paper? the paper yeah shoot the paper one of one of those like shirtless pugilist guys with the big mustache is like i keep punching it it doesn't stick together i don't know

back to the laboratory i guess i've boxed the paper see and i've beaten it into submission Yeah. And so from there, they start to develop metal fasteners. And one key advance in this is a discovery of a law of physics in the 1600s by a scientist named Robert Hooke in England. what's now called Hooke's law, which is a principle where there are solid objects that you can bend with an amount of force, but if you do a small enough amount of force bending it, it will bend and then return to its original shape. That's the extremely fast version of Hooke's law. And so between understanding the scientific principle and just experimenting, people figured out that pieces of steel wire could do this kind of bending. Like you bend it a little bit to put pages between it and then it returns to its original shape, which means it holds the pages. And so that's the like physics principle of paper

clips. So that was helpful too. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's easy to forget that we kind of didn't figure that stuff out. We had to like actually learn that. Oh yeah. When you bend something that's kind of strong, it goes back to its shape. So many of these things were just not obvious until the, the bare chested fighter, whoever figured it out. Yeah. It's wild.

Just things like, uh, learning the physics of flipping your pillow over to the other side so it's cooler and more plush and then cut to that guy's like meeting queen victoria like thank you for figuring that out i sleep good now i feel like relaxing some of my ridiculous rules because I'm getting better sleep. Less grumpy. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back. I'm Jesse Thorne.

I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast,

The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Basically from the 1860s through the 1890s, a group of people develop the modern paperclip style.

And we'll talk more about that in a sec, but that leads us into another big takeaway for the main show here. Takeaway number two. Paperclips had a real role in the World War II Norwegian resistance movement. I knew it. I knew it. Yeah, we all knew this. As soon as I said World War II in the main show, you were like, Norway's coming. It's just the way it is. I knew they needed help from good old Clippy. It's just the way it is. I knew they needed help from good old Clippy.

What if the name Clippy is like Norwegian language for heroic paperclip or some cool, really epic thing? Bent hero metal. Yeah, this story, it's amazing because we're going to talk about a real Norwegian resistance movement thing and then later a myth that sparked about Norwegians inventing the paperclip. Norwegians did not invent the paperclip. Take that, Norway. Yeah. Putting them back in their place. So cool at Norway. But this story is just such an amazing role paperclips have played in the world. We talked about a ton of uses for them in the numbers, but here's another one. And the key sources are the books in the previous takeaway, also PBS Nova, and also a piece for Gizmodo. Because Norway in World War II, I don't think it's super famous for

having a role in the war, but it's partly because it was invaded and occupied by the Nazis for almost all of the war. The Germans invade in April 1940. By June 1940, they've taken over. They've installed a puppet government under a guy called Vidkun Quisling. And Quisling was... That's where Quisling comes from, right? Exactly. That's where Quisling comes from, right?

Exactly. He was such a awful pro-Nazi collaborationist guy that now his last name is a word that means collaborationist. Quisling. Yeah. Yeah. Also, just like what a nerd name. Come on. Yeah.

If his last name was Smith, it wouldn't have happened. It's used for too many things. But Quisling was available broadly. Yeah. And so anyway, the Norwegians are occupied by the Germans. And so that leads to a bunch of forms of Norwegian resistance. The immediate one is they evacuate the Norwegian treasury's stockpile of gold. They sneak that to the UK as the Germans invade. They also sneak the Norwegian monarchy out of the country, and King Ha commando operation to sabotage a facility in

Norway that was being used by Nazi atomic research scientists. It was part of the Nazi nuclear program, but Norwegians managed to sabotage it and slow them down. That's really cool. I actually just went to a resistance museum in Paris and it talks about like how, uh, how people in France resisted the occupation. And there's a lot of really cool innovation. Like they would print out these, like the resistance groups that had fled to, uh, England would print these little tiny booklets that had like just various titles like poetry books, you know, fiction books, like, you know, household chores, whatever. I don't know.

And they would inside the book on each page on like a few lines, print out some instructions for saboteurs of where to target what and how to target things. And so they would drop these in for the resistance. And so when, you know, some kind of like Nazi would look at it, it just looked like a little book of poems. But if you look at like page, like each of the pages and you find like a line that doesn't quite fit in and you put them together, it would end up being instructions to go do sabotage. That's amazing. And so clever.

Yeah, because they really had to get creative. This really fits the story, too, because it's such like everyday heroism. Like if the Nazis figured out what that printer was doing, they'd probably execute him or something. But yeah, they felt like it was worth it. And so they did that thing that is not from an action movie, but very heroic. was worth it. And so they did that thing that is not from an action movie, but very heroic. Yeah. Like this incredible heroism in these seemingly mundane actions. That's so cool. A even more mundane thing here is Norwegian paperclip use,

which I don't mean to laugh at that. It's just a funny phrase. Because then like on top of all these military and government and gold bullion moves, there also became a just simple pattern of Norwegians, you know, day-to-day regular people pushing to signal their continued resistance to this occupation to say that they don't think it's okay because it was six whole years and Quisling's government was doing stuff like forcing school teachers to join the Nazi party and then teach a Nazi curriculum. Like there was a big attempt to Nazify Norwegian society and it took active resistance for people to say in coded ways that they were not into it. And one of the main forms of that was coded signals on clothing. They would try to wear something that indicated they were opposed to the Nazis. The first idea for a code was to put H7 on their clothing, because H7 stands for King

Hakon VII, the Norwegian king in exile. But the Nazis figured out that code really fast. It's pretty obvious. From there, the Norwegians found sneakier and subtler codes, and one of the main ones became attaching a paperclip to your clothing. Oh, interesting. Because a paperclip, like in so many of these other stories, a paperclip is ordinary. It's not something that jumps out. It's something you can just get. And Gizmodo says within a few months of the start of the occupation, students at Oslo University put paperclips on their lapels. And it was mainly that metaphor meaning of a paperclip where it's holding things together. And so the message was, let's stick together,

let's hold together against this occupation that will end once the Allies can come, is our hope. Oh, wow. That's really beautiful. I feel like paperclips kind of have a good thing that they did during World War II, and then maybe Project Paperclip wasn't so bad. So I guess it's a wash for Clippy's morality during World War II. Yeah, it's just amazing how much this item is integrated with World War II specifically. And that work comes up on this podcast some of the time about some topics. It's astounding how many different, weird, disparate connections there are. I just can't believe it. And modern ones and everything. Yeah. It's almost like it's a conspiracy. Yeah. Clippy is like, it looks like you're running an Illuminati.

Would you like to wear a weird hood and a mask or something? I'll put one on. I'll start. Why is Clippy speaking Latin? That's weird. Anyway. But then this paperclip, it's also something that's hard to find super specific documentation of because it was a subtle and day-to-day resistance activity and and you know the paper clip does not morph or change we don't

have like very i couldn't find any like museums where you can go see a paper clip that was used this way or anything but apparently the nazis did start to catch on to the messaging and so in some cases people were arrested for having paperclips on them. Yeah. Were they just like, I was missing my button. Come on, man. Yeah. Like there's enough plausible deniability because, because there are people who just in real life have used paperclips to hold together clothes, especially in a, in a tricky situation. So yeah, it was sort of a perfect tool for this really unexpected use. I mean, or just like take the paper clip. What? You mean my ear cleaning paper clip? Is that what you're worried about?

Gary, if you want, you can take it. And the German general is like, these people are too gross. We're leaving Norway. You guys are free again. Forget it. I don't want to even think about that. And there's one more takeaway for this main show here. It will also touch on World War II Norway again. But last takeaway for the main show.

Takeaway number three. The standard modern paperclip is a specific type of paperclip called a gem. It turns out there's lots of varieties and designs of paperclips, and what I thought was the only kind before researching, that's one variety, and it's called a gem. I mean, it sure is a gem. Love those paperclips. Why is it called a gem? The gem. Love those paperclips. Why is it called a gem? And I know we're kidding, but there are legitimately, apparently there was a Museum of Modern Art exhibition that featured this paperclip design. There's also a German design museum that featured it. It's considered by some people to be like a really iconic execution of designing something. And this gem, much like the paperclip in general,

does not have one specific inventor. The thing we do know, according to James Ward's book, it got its name from one big manufacturer of it early on. There was a British company called Gem Manufacturing Limited. And they made and sold so many of this kind of clip, their company name kind of got tied to it. But also they... Yeah, kind of like Kleenex. Yeah, it's sort of a Kleenex. And so if you want to be fun about paperclips interpersonally, folks, you can say, that's called a gem. And you'll know.

But it's because of this company. What? That's a normal pitch, right? Anyway. If you want to be fun about paperclips, it's like, technically, that's called a gem. Yeah, I'm leading you down a positive path that won't bug people. Yeah, that's right. Alex guarantees you will make friends this way. Maybe even find love. I do want to warn you, you will suddenly be driving a convertible with babes in all the other seats.

So be aware of that. But and so this this company, yeah, it's sort of a Kleenex, like their name got attached to the style of paperclip. But also they did not invent it, did not patent it. And so that's why everybody makes it. There's no clear record of any one person developing the exact rounded, loopy design that you're mentally picturing if you think of a paperclip. That's interesting. This takeaway, there's a visual element if you want to see a bunch of other designs that are out there. The fun audio version is the names. Starting in the 1860s, according to James Ward, there were competing styles of paperclip that included the Eureka, the Niagara, the

Herculean reversible paperclip, the Mogul, the Denison, and then my favorite one to look at, I'll have a picture for folks, it's a kind of paperclip called the owl. The owl is like a square-shaped clip, but then there's two wires inside it that loop at the end. And those sort of look like the eyes of an owl inside an owl's face. Yeah. That could have been the main paperclip if people decided they liked that better. It was just what people decided in the late 1800s. Yeah, interesting.

Were there like functional differences between our preferred clip and these other reject clips or just the fashion of it? The short version is there are pretty minor functional differences and people who are into engineering and mechanics of stuff get way into it. The main thing these companies were trying to solve is whether the paperclip dug into a document, and especially if it pierced a document at all. And the roundedness of the gem has been pretty effective at not doing that. But also Henry Petrosky talks to some archivists who say like, no, the gem is not the best we could do it in dense paper in a bad way. So this is like a thing that I have learned about and have not gotten into. Kind of, kind of stepped into a controversy there. I didn't realize so, uh, contentious. It really is. It's just wild. Yeah. And, and also I think this is kind of a good era to be

into that if you are because you can just go online and order the type you want i'm sure like if if it was 20 years ago you probably couldn't yeah get every every type of paper clip and just have those in your pocket so you can walk up to someone and say did you know that's a gem actually in fact there were other kinds of paper clips like these that i have with me right now. And then the last, last thing here, this gem origin helps us bust a myth that developed after World War II about Norway. Because the gem clip, there's no inventor, but the earliest recorded mention of them is from 1883. And then like the earliest industrial diagram of one is from 1899. And then that busts a myth that a Norwegian invented the paperclip in 1901, because there sort of became

an internet belief that a Norwegian named Johan Waller is the inventor of the paperclip. What he actually did is patent one style of them. And when you look at his patent, it's a square shaped clip and it's not even the main one we use. But people heard that like real Norwegian resistance story we were talking about and then presumed part of the reason Norwegians did that paperclip secret code metaphor symbol was that paperclips are super Norwegian and a Norwegian invented them. And it's like an iconic Norwegian item, but that's not true. Ah, yeah, you're right. I mean, they're not called paper Johans, so.

Also, can we start? That sounds, that's kind of fun. I i don't know it'll tell me who heard the show folks that is the main episode for this week. This is me, Alex, and a little outro after the show. I hope you know how special of a show this is. It is the first ever episode on the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. That is my dream home for this podcast. I am thrilled and grateful that they wanted it to be a part of that awesome thing they have going. There is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you're a member at MaximumFun.org.

Supporters of this podcast get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to that main episode. This week's bonus topic is two ways of using paperclips to gain a house. Visit MaximumFun.org for that bonus show and for a library of 129 other bonus shows. That's more than 10 dozen other bonus shows. It's its own feed. I've heard that some folks listen weekly. Other folks treat that catalog as a second separate podcast and they hear them all in a row. However you enjoy them, I hope you enjoy and thank you for making this podcast possible.

I figure many of you are new to the show. Max Funster's checking it out for the first time. Welcome and thank you. And this outro is a bunch of fun little features. So here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, before we had paperclips, people spent centuries struggling to clasp their papers with pins. Takeaway number two, paperclips had a real role in the World War II Norwegian resistance movement. And takeaway number three, the standard modern paperclip is a specific type of paperclip called a gem. Those are the takeaways. Also, quick research citation this week. Key sources included that book, The Evolution of Useful Things by Dr. Henry Petrosky,

another book called The Perfection of the Paperclip by design blogger James Ward, another book called The Perfection of the Paperclip by design blogger James Ward, plus more resources from the U.S. National Archives, the Smithsonian, Emojipedia.org for those Microsoft Clippy emoji. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links, which we're indexing on the show page at MaximumFun.org. That SIFT pod page also has links and resources such as Native-Lland.ca, and I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. I want to acknowledge that in my location and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here.

When this show talks about things like United States history, it's in that context. So it feels worth doing that on each episode. And beyond all that, I am so thrilled about my new co-host, Katie Golden, who you may know from this podcast. Also, I hope you know her from the podcast Creature Feature that she hosts and produces and makes. It's her own show about animals and amazing things about them and amazing ways they are like us. Absolutely fantastic podcast. Look up Creature Feature. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks to our

members and to Maximum Fun in general. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating here on MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.