Innovative Tuesday: Duel Inventions - Flash Drives & Staplers

     Hello everybody and welcome back to another edition of Global History Hub! I'll be your host, Mr. Nations, your tour guide to this massive world we all call home. In today's edition of Innovative Tuesday, we'll be talking about another two small inventions that have a big impact on the world today - flash drives and staplers. Well, what are we waiting for? Let's dive straight into it!

     Flash Drives: 

     The humble flash drive goes by many names, including pen drive, thumb drive, flash drive, memory stick, and USB. Whatever you call it, it is a crucial device when it comes to computing between multiple machines. IBM claims to have invented the small device in 1999 but is disputed by many. This drive originally held just eight megabytes, but that amount quickly jumped up to 256 gigabytes per drive. As the storage capacity increases, the price decreases as well. A brand-new 128-megabyte drive cost about $100, but only two decades later, the price decreased to about $10 for eight gigabytes.

     Today, flash drive are massive and can read and write data incredibly quickly. It makes working between multiple computers easy and efficient and makes moving data easier than ever. Without these handy little drives, the world of computers would be much different.

     Your average flash drive looks a lot like this:

     

     Sources: https://mediafast.com/history-of-the-flash-drive/

     Staplers:

     Just about everyone owns a stapler, some may even own more than one! But why and how were they invented? Ever since the invention of paper, humans have tried many different methods of being the paper together to form longer documents or books. It was King Louis XV that wanted an easier way to bind papers together, and thus the first stapler was born. It was made out of gold and bore several previous stones. Unfortunately, it was expensive to operate and thus was not very popular with people of lower wealth.

     The late 1800s and early 1900s brought about much change in how staplers functioned, and the competition to make better and cheaper ones was fierce. Eventually, the company Swingline would create the best staplers around, and they still make decent ones today. In fact, Swingline set the standard for staplers and that standard hasn't really changed since.

     One of the first staplers:

     

     Sources: https://www.stapleslinger.com/a-summary-of-the-history-about-staplers/#:~:text=George%20McGill%20Invented%20the%20First%20Functional%20Stapler&text=Invented%20by%20the%20Novelty%20Manufacturing,the%20staple%20to%20the%20paper.