Staplers have been keeping your paper together, keeping them organized, and aids in your ability to submit your work on time. However, what happens when you go to staple your papers and nothing happens?
You get frustrated, you have to search around for more staples, and your work may not be submitted on time as a result.
Fill Our Staples Day helps solve that problem ahead of time before it even happens by encouraging people to take the time
Fill Our Staplers Day Timeline
First U.S. Patent for a Paper Pinning Machine
Samuel Slocum receives a U.S. patent for a “Machine for sticking pins into paper,” an early step toward mechanical paper fastening in offices.
McGill Patents Metallic Paper Fasteners
George W. McGill secures a U.S. patent for improvements in metallic paper fasteners, helping shift offices from sewing and pinning to metal staples.
Early Staple Press Demonstrated
McGill patents a small press that can drive his wire fasteners through paper, giving clerks a practical tool for quickly binding documents.
McGill Single‑Stroke Staple Press
The U.S. Patent Office grants McGill a patent for the Single‑Stroke Staple Press, one of the first commercially successful stapling machines for office paperwork.
Rise of the Desktop Stapler
Manufacturers introduce compact desk staplers, making it easier for office workers to fasten everyday paperwork directly at their desks.
Introduction of the Swingline Easy‑Load Stapler
Swingline debuts an easy‑loading stapler that uses strips of staples, a design that becomes standard equipment in offices around the world.
Mass Adoption of Standardized Staples
With expanding white‑collar work and mass‑produced office supplies, staplers using standardized staple strips become routine on desks, making refilling a regular office chore.
History of Fill Our Staplers Day
Even while much of today’s workforce is moving towards a digital platform, there are still many offices today that operate using paper. What better way to keep papers together than with staples?
Staplers have been around since the 1700s surprisingly enough, and the invention of the stapler came about when the invention of paper. The first stapler came about when King Louis XV wanted a way to keep papers together, and thus the stapler was invented to do so.
Although many improvements to the mechanical design of the stapler, the 1800s sparked a wide variety of inventions and improvements to technology that helped spark the industrial revolution and its economic flourish of businesses and offices.
The stapler’s design, as a result, hasn’t been changed since the 1930s because of how impactful it became in office life.
According to DullMen’sClub, the holiday was submitted to McGraw-Hill for inclusion to their Chase’s Calendar of Events for 2013. Since it was accepted, the holiday has continued to be part of the Chase Calendar of Events for each year.
Fill Our Staplers Day centers around a simple concept; fill up office staplers so people can keep working and get their work done on time. Why does such a holiday exist? Simply because of how annoying it can be to find that your stapler has no staples in it.
If there are no staples in your stapler, you’d have to either ask someone to fill it for you or go get the staples yourself. When that happens, it delays your work and can potentially get you in a lot of trouble if your work is critical by a certain time.
How to Celebrate Fill Our Staplers Day
Celebrate Fill Our Staplers Day by going around your local office and replacing the staples. By doing so, many of your co-workers will appreciate your kindness and effort. It may just make your day go a lot smoother.
If you don’t work in an office, replace the staplers around your home. This can be handy to help organize your paperwork, help your kids with their homework, and make your life overall easier.
Share this holiday on social media using the hashtag #fillourstaplersday and let your friends know about this quirky yet helpful day.
Facts About Fill Our Staplers Day
Industrial-Era Stapling Was Surprisingly Cumbersome
Early commercial staplers in the 19th century were heavy, expensive machines that often weighed several pounds and could only fasten a few sheets at a time, and many had to be reloaded one staple at a time instead of using strips.
This made binding documents slow work in busy offices until later designs introduced lighter bodies and more efficient loading systems.
The First Modern Strip-Loading Staplers Arrived in the 1890s
A stapler that closely resembled modern office models was introduced in 1895 by the E. H. Hotchkiss Company, using connected strips of staples instead of individual pieces.
This shift to strip staples dramatically reduced the time spent reloading, helping staplers become a standard tool on office desks rather than a specialty machine.
Swingline Helped Standardize Easy-Loading Desk Staplers
Founded in New York City in 1925, the company that became Swingline focused on making staplers that were easier and faster to refill, pioneering a design in the late 1930s that allowed users to open the stapler and drop in a full strip of glued staples.
That basic top- or swing-opening mechanism became so practical that it remains the core design for many desktop staplers today.
Electric Staplers Emerged to Handle High-Volume Paperwork
As office paperwork exploded in the mid‑20th century, manufacturers began offering electric staplers to spare workers from repetitive manual stapling.
Swingline, for example, introduced its first electric stapler in 1969 specifically to help schools, businesses, and busy clerical departments staple large stacks of documents more quickly and with less physical strain.
A Cult Film Turned a Red Stapler into a Pop-Culture Icon
The 1999 movie “Office Space” featured a bright red Swingline stapler that became so recognizable that many viewers assumed it was a standard model, even though Swingline did not sell a red version at the time.
Demand from fans after the film led the company to release a real red Swingline 747 stapler in the early 2000s, turning a basic office tool into a collector item.
Paper Remains a Massive Part of Global Office Life
Despite digital tools, global demand for paper and paperboard remains in the hundreds of millions of metric tons per year, with industry analyses projecting continued growth into the 2030s.
Office workers in developed economies still use thousands of sheets annually, which keeps simple fastening tools like staplers relevant in workplaces that might otherwise appear to have gone paperless.
Staples Themselves Are Usually Recyclable with Office Paper
Most office staples are made from steel, and paper recycling systems are designed to remove them mechanically during pulping, so people generally do not need to pull staples before putting documents into a recycling bin.
Mills use equipment such as screens and magnets to separate metal contaminants, which are then recovered and recycled separately from the fiber.
