The Evolution of the Design of the Pocket Protector

Henry Petroski writes about the pocket protector in his latest article on the history of industrial design, following an earlier web article from Jeanette Medea . While inventors had tackled the vexing problems of ink-stained shirts and misplaced pencils going back to the nineteenth century, an engineer named Hurley Smith patented what could be considered the modern article in 1947, describing a lightweight strip of plastic folded twice to fit into a shirt pocket : one at the bottom of the pocket, to hold the pens or tools, and one at the top front of the pocket, to form a flap that writing instruments could be clipped onto. The strip was extended above the pocket in the back to provide extra protection for the shirt. Curiously, Smith's main drawing did not illustrate an enclosed pocket-within-a-pocket, but rather a folded-over strip open at the sides. Realizing the potential demand for side seam protection, however, Smith included a drawing for an alternative implementation that is recognizably the pocket protector that became a badge of professional engineers over the next several decades, roughly corresponding to the era of the mainframe computer.

Competition sprung up almost immediately, from so many small manufacturers dispersed around the country that Smith decided against suing to enforce his patent. Gerson Strassberg marketed a pocket protector of his own design for a half century, although he later exaggerated his role in its invention , as Petroski points out. Strassberg didn't patent his design; "the best patent in the world is to make a million of them and sell them quickly", he explained. While pocket protectors are still being sold , most of today's engineers have moved on... perhaps, to clip-on security badges.