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The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information
The history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with information
The ubiquity of the filing cabinet in the twentieth-century office space, along with its noticeable absence of style, has obscured its transformative role in the histories of both information technology and work. In the first in-depth history of this neglected artifact, Craig Robertson explores how the filing cabinet profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used.
Invented in the 1890s, the filing cabinet was a result of the nineteenth-century faith in efficiency. Previously, paper records were arranged haphazardly: bound into books, stacked in piles, curled into slots, or impaled on spindles. The filing cabinet organized loose papers in tabbed folders that could be sorted alphanumerically, radically changing how people accessed, circulated, and structured information.
Robertson’s unconventional history of the origins of the information age posits the filing cabinet as an information storage container, an “automatic memory” machine that contributed to a new type of information labor privileging manual dexterity over mental deliberation. Gendered assumptions about women’s nimble fingers helped to naturalize the changes that brought women into the workforce as low-level clerical workers. The filing cabinet emerges from this unexpected account as a sophisticated piece of information technology and a site of gendered labor that with its folders, files, and tabs continues to shape how we interact with information and data in today’s digital world.
The ubiquity of the filing cabinet in the twentieth-century office space, along with its noticeable absence of style, has obscured its transformative role in the histories of both information technology and work. In the first in-depth history of this neglected artifact, Craig Robertson explores how the filing cabinet profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used.
Invented in the 1890s, the filing cabinet was a result of the nineteenth-century faith in efficiency. Previously, paper records were arranged haphazardly: bound into books, stacked in piles, curled into slots, or impaled on spindles. The filing cabinet organized loose papers in tabbed folders that could be sorted alphanumerically, radically changing how people accessed, circulated, and structured information.
Robertson’s unconventional history of the origins of the information age posits the filing cabinet as an information storage container, an “automatic memory” machine that contributed to a new type of information labor privileging manual dexterity over mental deliberation. Gendered assumptions about women’s nimble fingers helped to naturalize the changes that brought women into the workforce as low-level clerical workers. The filing cabinet emerges from this unexpected account as a sophisticated piece of information technology and a site of gendered labor that with its folders, files, and tabs continues to shape how we interact with information and data in today’s digital world.
280 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 2021
16 people are currently reading
327 people want to read
About the author
Craig Robertson
41 books250 followersDuring his 20-year career with a Scottish Sunday newspaper, Craig Robertson has interviewed three recent Prime Ministers; attended major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann; been pilloried on breakfast television, beaten Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, been among the first to interview Susan Boyle, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 4, 2023
The best book about filing cabinets I've ever read
Read
January 29, 2024i just really want a filing cabinet tbh
August 13, 2021
It's tempting to think of "technology" as whiz-bang inventions (rockets and surgical robots) or at least objects with engines or silicon chips. This book takes a look at a different technology: the filing cabinet. (There's an interesting point about calling it a "filing cabinet," emphasizing the act of filing, or a "file cabinet," emphasizing what it holds, files. "Filing cabinet" was the dominant term in the first several decades of its existence.)
We've all used them, but who's thought much about them? They didn't always exist, of course. And then, in the early part of the twentieth century, they became standard for all sorts of offices. What did they offer that account books, shelves, and roll-top desks didn't? And how did they shape how we think about information?
The book has a lot to offer, from interesting tidbits (the Library Bureau sold training kits with miniaturized papers and files, so that students could practice filing at their desks) to big themes (e.g., about gendered work). I enjoyed the illustrations showing ads and catalog copy.
Chapter 7 leaves the office for the home, exploring how the themes of granular storage and efficiency were expressed in products and advice for the domestic market.
There were a few places when I might have edited out a little repetition or social theory jargon, but on the whole I quite enjoyed this.
Worth checking out, if you're interested in information, technology, business history, or women in the workplace. Or old-time pictures of women in shirt-waist dresses beside rows of filing cabinets.
We've all used them, but who's thought much about them? They didn't always exist, of course. And then, in the early part of the twentieth century, they became standard for all sorts of offices. What did they offer that account books, shelves, and roll-top desks didn't? And how did they shape how we think about information?
The book has a lot to offer, from interesting tidbits (the Library Bureau sold training kits with miniaturized papers and files, so that students could practice filing at their desks) to big themes (e.g., about gendered work). I enjoyed the illustrations showing ads and catalog copy.
Chapter 7 leaves the office for the home, exploring how the themes of granular storage and efficiency were expressed in products and advice for the domestic market.
There were a few places when I might have edited out a little repetition or social theory jargon, but on the whole I quite enjoyed this.
Worth checking out, if you're interested in information, technology, business history, or women in the workplace. Or old-time pictures of women in shirt-waist dresses beside rows of filing cabinets.
Read
November 8, 2023A point made in Cesar Hidalgos why information grows - information is physical order. And that order changes how you can process information. This book focusses on a specific technology - filing cabinets. A parenthesis between copybooks and databases.
March 10, 2023
This book isn't for everyone, but I loved every second of it. More than a history of file cabinets, it traces our fascination and efforts to sort and retrieve information. So many thoughts about the arc of business history related to information and also the way we view information in our modern computing era all seem to converge here. And even more practically, many thoughts were stimulated around how I personally store and access and retrieve information in my day-to-day work.
Admittedly I'm a sucker for a good file cabinet, well made file folders, filing systems (It was a revelation when David Allen said to ditch the hanging file folders that just eat up more space), quality paper, label makers and all the tools used to sort and retrieve information. This book seemed to prey on those interest.
Admittedly I'm a sucker for a good file cabinet, well made file folders, filing systems (It was a revelation when David Allen said to ditch the hanging file folders that just eat up more space), quality paper, label makers and all the tools used to sort and retrieve information. This book seemed to prey on those interest.
July 17, 2021
Really interesting topic but pretty academic at times.
April 30, 2021
Where things go affects what they are. With its enamelled sides and partitions, the filing cabinet reconfigured office architecture, working conditions and the very definition of information. It was the vernacular expression of a new understanding of modernity and efficiency. Through The Filing Cabinet, Craig Robertson uses advertisements, management textbooks and company records to present a history of the storage and circulation of documents in early-twentieth-century US offices.
For a book that began as an intentional parody lecture on media materialism, I got the impression that its author genuinely enjoyed his research, which in turn made The Filing Cabinet all the more enjoyable to read. Robertson’s combined use of illustrations and historical documents clearly display the culture he is trying to capture. As a result, I think The Filing Cabinet would be particularly helpful for researchers who want to write about media materialism, without getting lost in the minutia of model numbers. It also establishes the conditions that led to the increasing US culture of managerial control in the 1970s and 1980s. I found myself riveted by the unspooling consequences of the adoption of the filing cabinet by US business — the manufacturing of tiny cabinets for classes at secretarial schools, the advocates of ‘filing’ clothes, the replacement of family Bibles for storing family memorabilia. With enough pressure, anything can take up more space.
Full review at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbo...
For a book that began as an intentional parody lecture on media materialism, I got the impression that its author genuinely enjoyed his research, which in turn made The Filing Cabinet all the more enjoyable to read. Robertson’s combined use of illustrations and historical documents clearly display the culture he is trying to capture. As a result, I think The Filing Cabinet would be particularly helpful for researchers who want to write about media materialism, without getting lost in the minutia of model numbers. It also establishes the conditions that led to the increasing US culture of managerial control in the 1970s and 1980s. I found myself riveted by the unspooling consequences of the adoption of the filing cabinet by US business — the manufacturing of tiny cabinets for classes at secretarial schools, the advocates of ‘filing’ clothes, the replacement of family Bibles for storing family memorabilia. With enough pressure, anything can take up more space.
Full review at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbo...
June 22, 2022
Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2022 Task #24: Pick a challenge from any of the previous years’ challenges to repeat! -- 2019 – Task 17 A business book
June 2, 2024
A fascinating an insightful read. I highly recommended this book
January 4, 2025
The cabinet and the files, in the office and in the home, with a brief look at who does the filing--the knowledge worker is replaced by information worker and knowledge by information.
Interesting premise and the author obviously enjoyed his research but I found his book overstuffed.
After a while, I did a lot of skimming. I was intrigued by the way the system moved from the office to the home.
Interesting premise and the author obviously enjoyed his research but I found his book overstuffed.
After a while, I did a lot of skimming. I was intrigued by the way the system moved from the office to the home.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews