6 Strange Facts about Document Shredding

People seem to think that document destruction is a pretty boring business. They’re very wrong, of course; we never get tired of watching our mechanical munchers make mulchy mayhem out of droves of documents, destroy diverse harddrives, and otherwise turn perfectly ordinary stuff into something unrecognisablein a matter of moments. But that’s only the here-and-now of the business.

Check out some of the fascinating things that make document shredding interesting ‘back then’ as well:

1. Do not anger a professional shredder! Things that can make your office shredder spit sparks and expire - paper clips, rubber bands, butterfly clips, hanging file folders and fingers - are no match for a professional shredder. They’ll get eaten and churned out the other end as just another crushed-up part (well apart from fingers)! Don’t mess!
2. The first paper shredding machine was patented in 1909 by Abbot Augusts Lowe, but was forgotten because Mr Lowe died before he could produce more than his first functional prototype.
3. The second paper shredding machine was used to save German engineer Adolf Ehinger from the Nazi secret police - Ehinger invented it himself to shred thousands of pieces of anti -Nazi propaganda in a hurry as Hitler came to power!
4. Paper shredding was a quiet, background part of normal business for decades until good ol’ ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon brought the practice back into the national spotlight by shredding vast quantities of paper as part of the attempted cover up of the Watergate scandal.
5. Iranian revolutionaries changed the businessin 1979, when they seized piles of strip -shredded documents from the American embassy in Iran and easily pieced together the strips, uncovering very sensitive intelligence information. From that day forward, cross cut shredders becamethe norm in government operations; apractice that has spread to nearly 100% of business shredding as well.
6. There’s a one-in-33 chance you’ll have your identity stolen in the next year. They have a host of ideas to reduce that risk, but chief among them, as you might expect, is shredding any and every business and personal document that has even the slightest bit of personal information on it.

From fighting Hitler to keeping your identity safe today - paper shredding has a long and glorious history as one of the unsung heroes of our modern world. If you think that you might benefit from a bit of document destruction yourself, call YorShred on 0800 002 9537 today!

We service business for onsite shredding in Leeds, onsite shredding in York, onsite shredding in Hull, onsite shredding in Scarborough and onsite shredding in Harrogate. As well as this we also offer offsite shredding in Leeds, offsite shredding in York, offsite shredding in Hull, offsite shredding in Scarborough and offsite shredding in Driffield.

We are not just a local company but also offer our services UK wide so why not speak with us.