Unpacking the History of Cardboard

Welcome to Becoming Sage, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. My name is Elan Baumgarten, and this week’s episode is about something that moves throughout the world everyday. Cardboard is vital to the movement of almost everything. With our modern world reliant on the rapid movement of goods because of the introduction of services that are provided by companies like Amazon and Ebay. Originally, today’s paper-based cardboard was made of fabric packaging materials that were invented in China during the 17th Century. While there aren’t any records of it, the spread of this packing technology likely spread to the West through the Silk Road. It wouldn’t be until 1817 that a German company would be the first to use cardboard boxes commercially. Later, a game released in a paper box was known as The Game of Besieging. While this all took place in 1817 in Germany, during the same year an individual known as Malcolm Thornhill invented a paper box. This distinction between cardboard and what was still just sturdy paper is very important. Like most stories of invention, this one does not come without its own conspiracies and mysterious figures. We’ll talk about them in a second, but first I’d like to remind anyone streaming this episode to give it a download and follow us to be notified of each new release, every week. Make sure to check us out on a podcast and music streaming platform if you are listening to this on the radio. Now, back to the conspiracy. Malcolm Thornhill. His name is the most widely credited with the invention of the cardboard box, or at least its first editions. In reality, there isn’t much evidence to back up the claim that he was even a real person. Before 2009, there was no record of him, at all. The two major books that have been published which both accredited him with the invention only cite a wikipedia page. An editor for wikipedia who caught the potential error said that he could not locate any references to him outside the wikipedia page, and the name appeared in a fashion that made it seem like somebody put their friend’s name in, as a joke. So who really invented the cardboard box? Shortly before the publishing of that board game an English company by the name of M. Treverton & Son would invent the first cardboard box. It was not made of corrugated cardboard, but simply made of paperboard. The issue with all of these inventors, and the reason that this history really is unpacking something big, is that there are no exact dates for these inventions, and there are many conflicting accounts. The first patent for a cardboard box, or one of its ancestors, would not come until much later. So far we have talked about the history of cardboard as a packing instrument, but their applications don’t end there. Back in the mid-19th Century, top hats were the rulers of the hat world. Edward Allen and Edward Healey would use cardboard to make the top hat structure more stable. These two men would later patent this in England for the fabric industry. Today’s cardboard is corrugated, which means that it has ridges and waves for increased strength. While some of these previous inventions had corrugated edges, it was hard to make them stay corrugated when dealing with paper. Oliver Long would solve this solution in 1874 by gluing the corrugated paper to a flat piece of paper on one side. This prevented them from losing their shape. Long’s creation was such a smash-hit that before the end of the very same year, G. Smyth invented a machine that could produce Long’s corrugated cardboard en mass. The final innovation that brings us the modern cardboard is from an American by the name of Robert H. Thompson, and he would file for a patent on his invention in 1882. He glued flat paper onto both side of the corrugated cardboard. Thompson’s idea was an instant success. The first factory to manufacture them popped up during 1883 in England, and then another in Germany during 1886. The many twists and turns that cardboard’s invention has are made up for in the sheerly hilarious failure that caused the invention of pre-made cardboard boxes that could be sold and then assembled on your own. A Scottish businessman by the name of Robert Gair owned cardboard factories. An issue with the calibration of one of his machines made it produce creases, instead of cutting the cardboard. This gave him the brilliant idea to sell the pre-creased cardboard for easy construction into a box. In just the United States alone, over 100 billion cardboard boxes are produced annually, and many of them are recycled. That is a lot of pine that is being cut down for boxes! The companies that manufacture cardboard prefer softwood trees like spruce because of their longer fibers that are more sturdy and can take more impact! Thank you for listening to Becoming Sage, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. My name is Elan Baumgarten. Make sure to give us a follow and download on a podcast streaming service, wherever you get your podcasts so that you are notified the next time we push out an episode and can listen to it from anywhere in the world. Don’t forget to tell your friends and family about Becoming Sage, where they can hear the ordinary become extraordinary!