A paper shredder is a mechanical device used to cut sheets of paper into either strips or fine particles. Government organizations, businesses, and private individuals use shredders to destroy private, confidential, or otherwise sensitive documents.
Invention
The first paper shredder is credited to prolific inventor Abbot Augustus Low, whose patent was filed on February 2, 1909. His invention was however never manufactured because the inventor died prematurely soon after filing the patent.
Adolf Ehinger's paper shredder, based on a hand-crank pasta maker, was the first to be manufactured in 1935 in Germany. Supposedly he created a shredding machine to shred his anti-Nazi leaflets to avoid the inquiries of the authorities. Ehinger later marketed and began selling his patented shredders to government agencies and financial institutions converting from hand-crank to electric motor. Ehinger's company, EBA Maschinenfabrik, manufactured the first cross-cut paper shredders in 1959 and continues to do so to this day as EBA Krug & Priester GmbH & Co. in Balingen.
Right before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a “wet shredder” was invented in the former German Democratic Republic. To prevent paper shredders in the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) from glutting, this device mashed paper snippets with water.
With a shift from paper to digital document production, modern industrial shredders can process non-paper media, such as credit cards and CDs, and destroy thousands of documents in under one minute.
History of use
Until the mid-1980s, it was rare for paper shredders to be used by non-government entities.
A high-profile example of their use was when the U.S. embassy in Iran used shredders to reduce paper pages to strips before the embassy was taken over in 1979, but some documents were reconstructed from the strips, as detailed below.
After Colonel Oliver North told Congress that he used a Schleicher cross-cut model to shred Iran-Contra documents, sales for that company increased nearly 20 percent in 1987.
Paper shredders became more popular among U.S. citizens with privacy concerns after the 1988 Supreme Court decision in California v. Greenwood; in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside of a home. Anti-burning laws also resulted in increased demand for paper shredding.
More recently, concerns about identity theft have driven increased personal use, with the US Federal Trade Commission recommending that individuals shred financial documents before disposal.
Information privacy laws such as FACTA, HIPAA, and the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act are driving shredder usage, as businesses and individuals take steps to securely dispose of confidential information.
Types
Shredders range in size and price from small and inexpensive units designed for a certain amount of pages, to large expensive units used by commercial shredding services and can shred millions of documents per hour. While the very smallest shredders may be hand-cranked, most shredders are electrically powered.
Shredders over time have added features to improve the shredder user's experience. Many now reject paper that is fed over capacity to avoid jams; others have safety features to reduce risks. Some shredders designed for use in shared workspaces or department copy rooms have noise reduction.
Mobile shredding truck
Larger organisation or shredding services sometimes use "mobile shredding trucks", typically constructed as a box truck with an industrial-size paper shredder mounted inside and space for storage of the shredded materials. Such a unit may also offer the shredding of CDs, DVDs, hard drives, credit cards, and uniforms, among other things.
Kiosks
A 'shredding kiosk' is an automated retail machine (or kiosk) that allows public access to a commercial or industrial-capacity paper shredder. This is an alternative solution to the use of a personal or business paper shredder, where the public can use a faster and more powerful shredder, paying for each shredding event rather than purchasing shredding equipment.
Services
Some companies outsource their shredding to 'shredding services'. These companies either shred on-site, with mobile shredder trucks or have off-site shredding facilities. Documents that need to be destroyed are often placed in locked bins that are emptied periodically.
Shredding method, and output
As well as size and capacity, shredders are classified according to the method they use; and the size and shape of the shreds they produce.