The Evolution of Filing Cabinets
Filing cabinets are important pieces of furniture for the office, whether it be in a corporate environment or based out of one’s own home. They not only keep files and documents organized and stored for easy access and retrieval, metal and steel cabinets can also protect important papers from being lost in accidental fire, earthquake, to a certain extent floods, and other random acts of nature. Originally made out of wood to keep letters in alphabetical order, they are now vital to any office to keep documents securely archived and safe from damage.
The first filing cabinets were designed to store letters in alphabetical order and had metal contraptions built inside to hold the letters securely in place. By the 19th century, the storage space of these cabinets evolved to become bigger to accommodate legal documents which were in practice, folded twice in half before being kept in storage. These cabinets kept the documents in a vertical orientation and grew increasingly in use at railroads by attorneys.
The first cabinets made for file storage resembled vertical pigeon holes and, aside from the inner metal devices to hold the papers in place, they were made out of wood. Later innovations in designed saw filing cabinets with various sizes of drawers to accommodate unfolded files and other kinds of documents and objects for storage. Even modular drawers were designed to allow users to rearrange their filing cabinets to a certain extent and be expanded and their business or needs required.
All-metal cabinets began to be constructed after the second World War when the availability of steel became limited and cabinet-makers had to design a cost-effective filing cabinet that would minimize the amount of steel required to manufacture. Metal is now the standard material used to construct filing cabinets in order to make them fire safe and also to allow built-in mini sized vault’s to be incorporated into the design to not only keep documents securely locked away, but small valuables as well.
In the United States, files and documents are generally stored in Legal or Letter sized folders for archiving. Filing cabinets are built in these two sizes to accommodate in either a vertical or horizontal orientation. Across the pond in the United Kingdom and other European countries, cabinets need to store A4 sized documents or foolscap. Drawers with sliders are quite popular now in order to hang files from built-in tabs on runners that are installed parallel near the top of the drawers. This method of storing files is becoming the standard and many filing cabinets are manufactured with no bottoms to the drawers as a reflection of this change.
From humble beginnings as wooden letter filing systems, the filing cabinet has become an absolute essential office item as keeping documents for storage and accounting has become a required practice. Because of the often sensitive and classified information stored in the files, it is vital for the cabinet system to be made of strong metal and be equipped with locks in order to keep the documents safe inside from not only acts of nature, but acts of theft as well.