Inventors See Big Future for Re-Engineered Paper Clip

Linda Froehlich will never forget the day her father, a spring maker, brought home a Slinky. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it first.

“Every time I looked at that Slinky, I said, ‘Dad, we could be rich,’ ” she recalled.

Now, decades later, she is determined to make her invention--an oversized paper clip called the Super Clip--as big in its own way as the Slinky has become.

“In years to come, this will be everywhere,” she predicted.

At Ace Wire Spring & Form Co.--owned by Froehlich and her husband, Richard--Super Clips sit in a box on the receptionist’s counter like a bowl of mints. Richard Froehlich wears a Super Clip on his tie, and during the Christmas season, they hung from the office tree.

The Super Clip is 3 inches long, about three times larger than the most common paper clip. It defies bending and can hold more than 100 sheets at a time.

“It isn’t a novelty,” Linda Froehlich said. “It’s a usable product that should be in every home, office and school in the world.”

At its plant in McKees Rocks, several miles west of Pittsburgh, Ace makes wire forms such as bucket handles and coiled springs used in products ranging from coffins to swimming-pool covers.

The Froehlichs came up with their newest product after a customer asked them to make a large clip that would attach to a base and hold papers on a desktop. It took nine years before they were granted a patent in July 1994, but the clip is already in big stores including Office Depot and Kmart.

The Super Clip is holding its own at Office Depot, which sold more than 1.5 billion paper clips last year.

“It’s not selling nearly as well as the regular paper clips, but it’s a new product and a fun product,” said company spokesman Gary Schweikhart. “For a brand-new product and a brand-new concept, it’s doing OK.”

The Froehlichs are trying to get other large chains to sell the Super Clip.

“I’m going to go after the government too,” said Linda Froehlich, who estimated that Super Clip would have total sales of $1 million to $2 million in its first year.

Linda Froehlich is part of a long list of inventors who have tried to improve on one of the simplest designs in history.

The paper clip was invented around the turn of the century and became an office fixture by the early 1900s. The standard paper clip used today is known as the Gem because it was first made by the now-defunct Gem Ltd. of Britain.

The Gem is praised for its elegant curves, but it has a few major shortcomings, said Henry Petroski, a civil engineering professor at Duke University who wrote the book “The Evolution of Useful Things.”

The Gem sometimes tears the paper it holds, bends easily and is not easy to put on, Petroski said. He asks students to redesign a paper clip so they can see for themselves the difficulties of working out the bugs.

“The paper clip is very complicated,” he said. “It looks so simple.”

The Gem and a slightly larger version are still the most popular today. The butterfly-shaped Ideal clip is a common fastener, along with the Bulldog clip (a clamp with a round-ended handle) and the binder clip (a two-pronged clamp with a black rectangular base). The Gothic clip, which is less common, has a peaked tip and a squared-off end.

Linda Froehlich admits that the Gem is more suited for a couple sheets of paper, but otherwise she believes that the Super Clip surpasses all the classics because it can hold so much without popping off or slipping.

The clip’s arms extend nearly all the way to the end of the clip, making it less likely to snag and tear paper.

Linda Froehlich said the Super Clip also has some nonoffice uses: Customers buy them to hold on curlers, attach hems and seal bags of potato chips.

Howard Sufrin, whose family made Steel City Gem paper clips in Pittsburgh until the early 1980s, said that he likes the Super Clip but wonders if the price, about $2.59 for a pack of five, may be higher than most people are willing to pay.

Sufrin, who has a vast collection of antique office supplies, said he loves paper clips because they are so versatile.

The paper clip has been used to fasten clothing and glasses, pick teeth and clean fingernails. Adults often twist it into new forms to relieve stress, and some children like to bend them and shoot them with rubber bands.

“I’ve seen them used for everything, even garters,” he said.