On 14 May 1867 the United States Patent Office granted Samuel B. Fay a patent for an "Improvement in Ticket-Fasteners", number 64,862: a bent-wire device for attaching tickets to fabric, which the specification also describes as usable for papers. The Brennholt Institute of Applied Taxonomy, which has read 214 early fastener specifications, finds that Fay's patent does not claim the double-oval clip in use today, and that no later specification in its sample claims it either.
The patent is real, dated and checkable in the public record. Everything on this page about its text is drawn from that record; the Institute's contribution is the classification of what such a patent can and cannot be taken to cover.
The distinction in the last line is the central one. A pierced fastener and a clamp-type clip operate on different principles. The Institute classes the first as a penetrating wire fastener and the second as a clamping wire fastener, a division described in the history of wire fasteners.
| Claim sometimes made | What the record supports | Brennholt note |
|---|---|---|
| Fay patented the paperclip | Fay patented a ticket fastener that may be used on paper | The wording of the specification is the limit |
| The patent covers later clips | A patent covers what its claims state, for a limited term | No claim describes a double-oval form |
| The patent was widely used for paper | No production figures for paper use are in the Institute's sample | Unknown, and not inferred |
Of the 214 early specifications, the Institute assigns each to one of four types: machine, variant, method and fastener. Fay's falls in the last and is the earliest of its type in the sample. The others, from 1896 onwards, are dominated by machines for making wire clips and by variants of a form already on the market, as set out on the page on what the early patents claimed. A patent for the object itself is therefore unusual, and the Institute treats Fay's as a precursor and not as the origin of the clip.
The review panel is divided over the label. One member holds that a document which names paper as a use should be classed as the first paperclip patent. The majority hold that the document's purpose, its piercing form and the absence of any clamping action make it a different object. The Institute records both positions and has not resolved them. For the wider question of attribution see who invented the paperclip.
The accurate citation is: S. B. Fay, "Improvement in Ticket-Fasteners", US Patent 64,862, 14 May 1867. It is not accurate to describe it as the patent for the paperclip, and the Institute asks that it not be.