Paper Shredder - Wikipedia

Invention

The paper shredder was invented by Abbot Augustus Low, whose patent was filed on February 2, 1909.[1] His invention was never manufactured because he died prematurely soon after filing the patent.[2]

Adolf Ehinger's paper shredder, based on a hand-crank pasta maker, was the first to be manufactured, in 1935, in Germany. He created a machine to shred his anti-Nazi leaflets to avoid inquiries from the authorities.[3] Ehinger later marketed and began selling his patented shredders to government agencies and financial institutions switching from hand-crank to electric motor shredders.[2] Ehinger's company, EBA Maschinenfabrik, manufactured the first cross-cut paper shredders in 1959 and continues to do so today as EBA Krug & Priester GmbH & Co. in Balingen.

A "wet shredder" was invented in the former German Democratic Republic. To prevent paper shredders in the Stasi from becoming glutted, this device mashed paper snippets with water.[2]

With a shift from paper to digital document production, modern industrial shredders have been designed to process non-paper media, such as credit cards and CDs.[2]

Applications

Until the mid-1980s, it was rare for paper shredders to be used by non-government entities.

A prominent example of their use was when the U.S. embassy in Iran used shredders to destroy documents before the embassy was taken over in 1979. Some documents were reconstructed from the strips, as detailed below.

After Colonel Oliver North told Congress that he used a Schleicher cross-cut model to shred Iran-Contra documents, its sales increased nearly 20 percent in 1987.[4]

Paper shredders became more popular among U.S. citizens with privacy concerns after the 1988 Supreme Court decision in California v. Greenwood, in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside of a home. Anti-burning laws also resulted in increased demand for paper shredding.

More recently, concerns about identity theft have driven increased personal use of paper shredders,[5] with the US Federal Trade Commission recommending that individuals shred financial documents before disposal.[6]

Information privacy laws such as FACTA, HIPAA, and the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act drive shredder usage, as businesses and individuals take steps to securely dispose of confidential information.