The typewriter changed how we create information, but the filing cabinet - only slightly younger - transformed how we find it afterwards, and has endured both as physical object and abstract metaphor even while paper itself fades out. The icons on your computer and even your phone are based on the contents of the filing cabinet - it defined document management for all forms of information, not just paper, and its influence endures through the ages.

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Its origins are not clear-cut, although you’ll be unsurprised to hear that it appeared not long after the arrival of the typewriter as a way to tame the mass of documents that every business was suddenly capable of generating. Making documents was easy: finding them again afterwards, not so much. Offices at the end of the 19th century relied on pigeonhole filing systems, archive boxes, and binding papers in large books in chronological order, with hand-made indices that were rarely comprehensive. Then, as now, business leaders concluded that access to information improved productivity, and therefore speedy access to information was the route to success. 

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The breakthrough was the realisation that if paperwork was stored upright, stacked on its edge, it became far easier to organise it - you could group documents alphabetically, or by project, and quickly flick through to find the one you needed. The history of filing cabinets is not - ironically - organised enough to identify a single inventor, but the closest we have as captured in Craig Robertson’s charming treatise “The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information” is Dr Nathaniel Rosenau of New York, who in 1892 had the idea of aping the cabinets used to store index cards. 

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He took the idea to the Library Bureau, the company founded by Melville Dewey - the creator of the Dewey Decimal system still used by libraries today. Dewey’s company developed a design and produced a vertical filing cabinet in 1900, which it claimed as the first, but it’s impossible to verify: as the new century dawned, dozens of companies across the US started producing filing cabinets at around the same time, rapidly innovating on existing furniture-making techniques.

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Filing cabinets required more advanced technology than simple furniture: paper is heavy, as anybody who’s accumulated magazines will know, and each filing cabinet drawer could hold over 35kg of paper. Manufacturers developed reinforced, ball-bearing runners that enabled fully-laden drawers to open and close smoothly, and as wood cabinets were quickly replaced by metal, they emphasised the strength and durability of their designs. 

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Users quickly got used to using cardboard folders and guide tabs to navigate what was inside, and the efficiency improvement over the old bound books was immediate and obvious; the phrase “information at your fingertips” was born of the filing cabinet. It was the vanguard of a rapidly expanding office equipment industry, and was the foundation of the 20th-century office. It was extraordinarily successful: by 1920, it was ubiquitous in every office worldwide - not just businesses, but schools, hospitals, and any other enterprise that needed organising. It symbolised efficiency and abstraction: information could be grouped and organised in way that hadn’t been possible before, and that laid the groundwork for the unprecedented expansion of industrial society over the course of the 20th century.

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It wasn’t all modernisation, mind. Like the typewriter before it, the filing cabinet was invariably presented as women’s work. Unlike early typewriters, it wasn’t sold with floral decorations on the side, but the advertising of the early 20th century made clear that female staff were expected to handle and store files but not read or understand them; that was the preserve of the male management team. Women were held to have nimble fingers ideal for filing - previous experience in crochet or piano-playing was cherished - and didn’t have to understand anything more than the filing system. 

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Attitudes towards women improved over the years; the primacy of the filing cabinet remained undiminished. The technology remained remarkably consistent, too: those first models of the 1920s are not all that far removed from the state of the art 70 years later. Meanwhile the speed and scale of business information only increased, and over the years paper filing became increasingly inefficient. 

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The rise of digital record-keeping in the 1990s offered a new way to group information, and rifling through hard copies to find what you needed became a sign of an old-fashioned business rather than a modern one. Digital document management systems like Workiro make it easy to organise and find information; hard copies needed more space and more staff that digital-native companies could go without, and be leaner and faster as a result. The lines of filing cabinets which had been a symbol of productivity in the 20th century became a symbol of inefficiency as the 21st century approached, and it became possible to find documents without getting out of your chair. 

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The symbol itself has endured, though, as the go-to icon for viewing stored files - even though tools like Workiro push the comparison to breaking point. Instead of taking a copy of every relevant document “for the file” - a commitment to paperwork that sees particularly bureaucratic companies see their buildings start to collapse from the sheer weight of paper inside them - Workiro automatically groups every email, every document and every approval together so you can see at a glance every bit of information for each project. 

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It’s the return of “at your fingertips”, and it’s just as easy to use - because Workiro supports all file formats, from spreadsheets and forms to Microsoft Office emails and contracts, you can access everything as immediately as you’d be able to with a physical file. It’s one of the best ways you can find and organise documents within NetSuite. To find out more about Workiro, book a demo today.