ACCO Brands Corporation’s roots stretch back to the founding of Wilson Jones in 1893, the American Clip Company (ACCO) in 1903 and the Swingline Company in 1925.

~579 SWINGLINE INC ·11. 5 . 60 1 2782 WILSON JONES CO 10.8 59 10/ /59 1TOTALS FOR .1959 49 MERGERS ASSETS AC .G.UIRED= $1431.1

If you believe ACCO Brands’ own corporate website, in fact, Wilson-Jones was actually the company that “invented the three-ring binder“

Ralph Wilson (b. 1870 in Paolo, KS) was something of a notorious showman, prone to exaggeration and theatricality during his two decades as company president. These were traits he’d picked up in his youth, when he spent several years touring with the Ringling Brothers caravan show, serving as the big top’s “advance man,” or glorified publicist. The weird leap from the three-ring circus to three-ring binders, apparently, was merely a logical next step.

The Wilson-Jones Company has managed to survive, too, albeit as a subsidiary of the massive office supply conglomerate ACCO Brands (Swingline, Mead, Trapper Keeper, among others).