Hey! Get Outta My Trash! by Grace

Did you know that is perfectly legal for someone to look through your garbage can?

With identity theft rampant, it’s so crucial to ensure that your documents are disposed of properly. One popular way of doing this is by using a shredder to render your sensitive documents unreadable. It also creates some pretty cool confetti!

Shredding documents is nothing new and has been around for some time. With the invention of papyrus in 4000 B.C., the need to destroy documents began. Before that time, cave drawings and stone tablets made it impossible to shred…well…much of anything! The Egyptians used papyrus as paper for writing documents. When a mistake was made, or information needed to be destroyed, the papyrus had be torn up manually. That must have been annoying. I wonder if papyrus gives you paper cuts?

Since then, shredding has come a long way!

The first machine-run shredder was created in Germany in 1935 by Adolf Ehinger, who printed anti-Nazi material. When he was confronted about materials found in his garbage can, he decided to create a device that would allow him to dispose of sensitive material. His biggest inspiration came from a hand-cranked pasta maker, commonly used during that time period. Adolf created a hand-cranked shredder that sat in a wooden frame. He later created a device with an electric motor.

At first, people laughed at his device and thought it was pointless. However during the 1940s, he sold the shredders to different governments and embassies. Thanks to the Cold War, the device grew in popularity during the 1950s. Paper shredders were typically only used by government entities from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Shredders have played an important role in history. Shredders are sometimes associated with the term “Cover-Up.” The Nixon re-election committee used a Fellowes Paper Shredder during Watergate. Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North used an Intimus 007-S shredder to shred documents during the Iran-Contra scandal. Cross cut shredders grew in popularity in 1979 after the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants. Documents at the embassy where only strip-cut, allowing the pieces to be pieced back together by Persian carpet weavers. Due to the Iran incident, the government now requires strict shredding conditions. [via paper-shredder-info.com]

Today, shredders are used in almost all business environments. New laws such as HIPAA and FACTA require that just about everything be shredded. Shredding now not only applies to paper – items such as floppy disks, DVDs and CDs can be shredded as well.

Protect your identity! Dispose of your business and personal documents securely…learn more about how shredders can protect your information here.