The History Of The Filing Cabinet

All you ever wanted to know about filing cabinets

While a filing cabinet isn't necessarily the most engaging piece of furniture, it is one that has made an impact on our everyday lives. Whether it's in a home or office, a filing cabinet is an easy way to stay organized.

Who invented the filing cabinet?

Edwin G. Seibels is credited with developing the idea for the filing cabinet in 1898. Prior to the filing cabinet that we know today, people used a complicated shelving system that required documents to be folded and placed on the appropriate shelf.

Seibels decided that all of the folding could be avoided by placing documents in a folder and storing these folders vertically in drawers. Today this type of filing cabinet is known as a vertical filing cabinet.

Over the years, people have modified the vertical filing cabinet by placing the drawers on top of each other to save floor space. Nowadays, you can find a vertical filing cabinet that features just a couple of drawers or ones with as many as four or five drawers.

Then came the lateral filing cabinet

It wasn't long after Seibels' invention of the vertical filing cabinet that the lateral filing cabinet was introduced. A lateral filing cabinet differs from a vertical filing cabinet by organizing files from side to side instead of front to back.

While either style provides ample storage, a lateral filing cabinet is often wider and lower to the ground, making them easier to use.

What's next?

Just over a century old, the filing cabinet has proven to be a useful and versatile piece of furniture. It's hard to think of how today's filing cabinet could be enhanced, but as long as the filing cabinet continues to be used, it is likely that manufacturers will figure out yet another way to improve it.

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