Paperweights:
The American Heritage dictionary defines a "paperweight" as "a small, heavy, often decorative object that is placed on loose papers to hold them down." In popular usage, the word is most often mentioned in a joking way: if something is completely useless, you might joke that "you can always use it as a paperweight." The joke works in part because no one really uses paperweights these days. You just don't need a weight to hold down papers. Papers placed on a table or desk generally just sit there.
So I wonder: Did people actually used to use paperweights, and if so, why? Were they just decorative, something used to show off the fact that you were literate and had paper? Or maybe they were more useful in an age before air conditioning and central heating, when you might expect more indoor air circulation that could blow your papers around? I looked around online, but I couldn't find anything directly on this. Any ideas?
So I wonder: Did people actually used to use paperweights, and if so, why? Were they just decorative, something used to show off the fact that you were literate and had paper? Or maybe they were more useful in an age before air conditioning and central heating, when you might expect more indoor air circulation that could blow your papers around? I looked around online, but I couldn't find anything directly on this. Any ideas?
Stretching a bit, but maybe from a time before there were glass windows (or before they were cheap enough to be readily available)?
Guess not. Wikipedia says they were produced first in the mid-19th century. Something pretty to put on your desk, I guess!
If you work for PG&E what I really meant to say is "lost in the mail."
I'm not that old, but I remember the saying back when people used paperweights. The basis for the "joke" isn't that people don't use paper weights anymore. It's because virtually anything can be used as a paperweight. If something was useful but later broke, it became a paperweight. If it was a Christmas present that you didn't want, you had a paperweight. In patent law, if you invented something and need to specify a utility to satisfy 35 USC 101, your invention could be a paperweight. ;-)
An interesting aspect of your post is, now that we don't use paperweights, I wonder if the saying will stick around.
In a related note, my sisters have three cats -- wind isn't the only thing that can ruin a nicely organized stack of paper.
(I myself am not one of those people. If confronted with the question, I try to remember the size of my toaster oven, and guess off of that.)
(See also: this post.)
I actually own a breadbox -- I took it from my mother, asking her a great many times how big it was -- planning to use it to hold bread, but it ended up taking up too much room on the counter. It's a nice enameled metal thing.
We've got a few paperweights -- my father's favorite is blown glass, and we've got some ceramic things. Like others said, useful when the window is open or a fan is blowing. I still open windows, but I have fewer papers. Or maybe not, but the papers I have are secondary to the computer.
I did have a master cylinder for a while that I was using to hold a door open.
Desk blotters anyone? Addiators?
But there is still no better mechanical pencil than the 0.046 inch (1.1 mm), especiall the Norma 4-color. (My father is fond of his stapler that cuts staples from a spool of wire, but that's too old-school for me.)
I place them on top of stacks of paper relating to different subjects so that the stacks do not get shuffled together and so that nothing is added to a stack without my placing it there. One paperweight per stack.
Argh! That really annoys me. A good anchor is possibly one of the most useful things on a boat. And before you rejoin with the fact that what makes those items useful as anchors is their dead weight, remember that a good anchor doesn't weigh that much -- it's value is in its shape, which makes it good for digging into rocks/sand/mud/grass etc. and holding on.
Now, maybe "boat mooring" wouldn't have the same ring to it, but it's the more accurate usage. In fact, people often use old enginge blocks as makeshift moorings.
Fear not. With all the junk mail clogging our mailboxes the trusty letter opener is always at hand.
1. Space heater, a name for an old, obsolete computer.
2. Crabcage, a name for an obsolete computer case (ie, one that doesn't easily fit current motherboards or power supplies).
Where I live, it's not consistently hot in the summer so houses typically don't have air conditioning, but it can get hot occasionally. So, people are likely to use fans and open windows in the evening, so paperweights are useful. I had never thought of paperweights as obsolete for this reason...
We stil have old documents that were stapled by one of those staplers.
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/barker/hist_pw.php
(second paragraph)
If I had to guess I would chalk up the decline in the use of paperweights to the following two factors in addition to those already cited.
1) An increase in the number of desktop/household 'cruft' such as staplers, lamps, ashtrays, pictures, letter boxes, cheap spare books, clocks, etc.. I suspect before the heyday of mass produced consumer goods there just weren't as many handy objects to hold your paper down with.
2) Threshold demand for paperweights. You don't need dedicated paperweights until the number of documents needing to be held down drops below the number of convenient cruft you have to hold it down. Since the advent of the computer, cheap stapling, central air, decreased use of (large) parchments that role up and all the other reasons cited above we've pushed down the need for paperweights down far enough that it can usually be handled by miscellaneous objects.
"Paperweight" is shorthand for old-style survival mechanisms. Any who presume no use for such pure physical objects engage either in pro forma, rote activities, or invite serious disruption of ongoing projects. Using any computer, it is essential to recall that, first, you have exactly zero privacy, and second, that anything you do or say constitutes arbitrary grounds for confiscation if not prosecution. No serious individual would risk such abusive violations for a second.
I have a paperweight or two on my desk, but I usually just use whatever bulky object is at hand (usually a book or a notepad) instead of searching for them.
And I'm in agreement with whoever brought up cats. Breeze is an issue during part of the year for me, but cats are a constant threat to my organizational schemes.
Back in the Darke Tymes before computers, printers, and cheap, widespread xerography, the way you kept a duplicate of a document was to make one or more carbon copies when the document was typed up. These copies were typically not on standard 20lb bond, but rather on gossamer-light onionskin, which moves with the slightest air current.
My preferred paperweight is a concrete plug cut by building maintenance when they were drilling holes in the floor to run wiring. Of course, I always have this fear that someday they will cut one plug too many and the Rhodes Office Tower in downtown Columbus, Ohio will come crumbling down.
For the past 30 years, my favorite paperweight has been an ice hockey puck bearing the emblem of the Montreal Canadiens, my club for more than half a century, before they became the greatest team in NHL history.
Same here. I have six paperweights in use this way right now. They are decorative, but they also serve a purpose -- making sure that each pile remains intact and in place.
BTW, for holding open transcripts and bound files, I highly recommend Levenger book weights.