| The popularity of paper shredders has grown in | | | | length of the paper, just like pasta. It wasn't until |
| recent years due to the rise in identity theft, as | | | | 1959 that Ehinger's company introduced the first |
| reports show that these crimes are most often | | | | Cross Cut Paper Shredder, which cuts the paper |
| committed by people who use stolen bank | | | | both horizontally and vertically, creating small |
| statements and other personal documents to gain | | | | confetti-type particles. And it apparently wasn't |
| access to other people's bank accounts, credit | | | | until 1979 that the American government realized |
| cards, etc. | | | | the value of the cross-cut shredder. |
| But the paper shredder itself has been around for | | | | During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, personnel in |
| almost a century. | | | | the American Embassy in Tehran apparently used |
| The first patent for a paper shredder was issued | | | | a strip cut shredder to destroy some top-secret |
| to A.A. Low in 1908. Low was a prolific inventor, | | | | documents. But after Iranian militants took over |
| and the only person to receive more patents | | | | the embassy, the militants used skilled carpet |
| during his lifetime than Low was Thomas Edison. | | | | weavers to put the pieces back together. Since |
| Low's "waste paper receptacle" consisted of a | | | | then, the Department of Defense has set |
| paper feeder and blades on rollers. The device | | | | increasingly strict standards for shredders that |
| could be powered by a hand crank or an electric | | | | are sold to the U.S. government. |
| motor. But Low was apparently too busy | | | | The event that probably first brought the paper |
| inventing things to market his paper shredder. | | | | shredder to the public's attention was the |
| In 1936, Adolf Ehinger, a German, patented his | | | | Watergate scandal of 1972, when news reports |
| own paper shredder design, which was inspired by | | | | revealed that one of the people involved in the |
| the common pasta maker, a hand-cranked device | | | | break-in of the Democratic National Committee |
| for cutting sheets of dough into strips. Ehinger | | | | Headquarters had used a paper shredder to |
| built a company, EBA Maschinenfabrik, to market | | | | destroy incriminating evidence. In recent years, |
| his invention. By 1956 he had customers in several | | | | several other news items have revealed the |
| countries. Most of his customers were | | | | alleged use of paper shredders to destroy |
| governments and financial institutions, which used | | | | evidence or cover up crimes. The most recent |
| the shredders to destroy their old or unwanted | | | | incident was in July of 2005, when news reports |
| classified documents to prevent the documents | | | | alleged that United Nations President Kofi Annan's |
| from falling into the wrong hands. | | | | cabinet chief had shredded large quantities of |
| The first paper shredders were "strip cut" paper | | | | documents related to the corruption in the UN's |
| shredders, which cut narrow strips down the | | | | Oil-for-Food program in Iraq. |