The stapler grew out of the 19th-century boom in paper use, which created demand for a quick way to fasten sheets. Early inventions were not staplers at all: an 1841 patent covered a machine for packaging pins, though it is often credited as the first stapler. In 1866 George McGill patented a small bendable brass fastener, and in 1877 Henry Heyl patented a machine that inserted and clinched a staple in one step. McGill's 1879 single-stroke press was the first commercially successful stapler, and a magazine of preformed staples arrived in 1878.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.