Paper Shredders – Dale’s Daily Data

We have a home paper shredder in the Mussen house. We generate a lot of sensitive and classified information - yeah right. Anyway in this day and age of identity theft my wife feels safer when we shred any papers or documents with any account numbers or our social security numbers on it.

Before the 1971 break-in at the Democratic National party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, not too many people had heard of a shredder. But it’s what G. Gordon Liddy used to destroy evidence.

A guy by the name of Adolf Ehinger is credited with inventing the paper shredder, inspired by the kitchen pasta making machine that turned sheets of dough into strips. And it was pretty high tech for its time. It had
blades on rollers that were operated by either a hand crank or electric motor.

The American government learned a tough lesson in 1979 when the American Embassy was overtaken by Iranian militants. Embassy workers were shredding confidential papers using a low-tech shredder just before the building was seized. All the Iranians had to do was piece together the strips of paper to recreate the documents. After that all government agencies went to high security shredders that cut documents into such small pieces they can never be assembled.

Some companies even recycle their shredded documents by using it as packing material.

Categories: Arts & Culture