Paper Cutter

A paper cutter, also called a paper guillotine, is a tool often found in offices, classrooms and craft rooms, designed to make straight cuts through a single sheet or a large stack of paper at once. The device originated in France, where a paper cutter was developed and patented in 1844 by the French inventor Guillaume Massiquot, and the American inventor Milton Bradley later patented his own design in 1879; through the rest of the nineteenth century manufacturers in Germany, England and the United States, including Fomm, Krause, Furnival, Oswego and Seybold, refined the tool further. A paper cutter typically features a grid marked surface with a ruler, a stationary steel edge and a curved steel blade that works something like a pair of scissors, with modern versions adding a finger guard for injury prevention, and sizes ranging from roughly thirty centimeters for office use up to 841 millimeters for larger applications. Beyond the classic guillotine style cutter, rotary models use a wheel shaped blade on a sliding shuttle, allowing decorative cuts and perforations while being safer for home use.