h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This entry is overdue for an update.
Beside the many grammatical errors it is also culturally biased. Since I'm Norwegian myself, I shouldn't mind, but fact is that even though Vaaler got the first patent in the world for his paperclip there is no evidence the more successful paperclips were based on his invention.
It is more likely that the paperclip was invented more or less independently by several people, and that Vaaler's clip, being a less convenient design, would never have been a hit.
I think this entry needs to be updated with information about William Middlebrook and Cornelius Brosnan.