Corrugated boxes have a long history, with the discoveries necessary for its creation ranging from Ancient China all the way to the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries that swept through the United Kingdom and the early United States. The earliest history of corrugated boxes dates all the way back to the 2nd Century with the invention of paper, one of the four great inventions of Ancient China. In the year 105 A.D., inventor Ts’ai Lun discovered the art of papermaking, sharing his discovery with the Chinese Emperor Han Ho-ti. For the next five centuries the emperors of China ensured the secrecy of the art of papermaking. Not until 751 A.D., when Arabs captured Chinese papermakers, did anyone else learn the Chinese secret of papermaking. By the early 1600s the Chinese had figured out the advantage of using thick paper (over .006 inches thick), also known as cardboard, as a packaging material.
Although cardboard was being used as a packaging material in the 15th Century, it was not until the early 19th Century that cardboard was used in the form of a box. In 1817, British industrialist Malcolm Thornhill became the first to use single-sheet cardboard as a box for packaging commercially. It would be another four decades before the technology of corrugated liner, an essential ingredient in corrugated boxes, came into being. In 1856, English inventors Edward Allen and Edward Healey patented their idea for a corrugated paper linerboard, which they used inside hats. Fifteen years later, in December 1871, American industrialist Albert Jones of New York, having recognized the value of adding Allen and Healey’s fluted corrugated linerboard to a single-side of boxes, patented his idea. Jones was the first to recognize the ability for a corrugated liner to improve the crush resistance of cardboard boxes, thereby increasing the weight boxes could endure when stacked.
The birth of double-side corrugated boxes as we know them today came about in 1874. New York industrialist Oliver Long took Jones’ idea of corrugating a single side of cardboard one step further. Long maximized the crush resistance and stacking strength of cardboard boxes by adding Allen and Healey’s corrugation technology to both sides of cardboard.
Finally, in 1890, Robert Gair, a printer in Brooklyn, New York, invented a corrugating machine that mass-produced pre-cut corrugated cardboard boxes for commercial use. Gair’s machine was the first to prefabricate folding corrugated boxes, the same as we use today.
Cardboard boxes remain one of the simplest ways to move things from one place to another. Whether it’s a case of juice boxes or you’re moving from one house to another, cardboard boxes help collect numerous amounts of things into one confined space for easy handling.