A filing cabinet (or file cabinet in the United States) is a piece of office equipment that is useful for temporary and permanent storage. It is usually used for the storage of paper in a file folder. The two most common forms of filing cabinets are lateral files and vertical files. A lateral file is used to store folders in a sideways fashion. They are standard in government and legal offices. They also permit variety in office design. These are also called side filers in Great Britain.
Horizontal file
Henry Brown, an African American inventor, patented a "receptacle for storing and preserving papers" on November 2, 1886. This was a fire and accident safe container made of forged metal, which could be sealed with a lock and key. It was special in that it kept the papers separated.
Vertical file
The vertical filing cabinet (vertical file cabinet in the United States) more or less as in use today was invented by Edwin G. Seibels in 1898. He was working in his father's insurance office and realised that the then current system of folding papers into envelopes and storing them in pigeon holes could be improved if the folding was dispensed with. The documents could then be stored in large envelopes (hangfiles) vertically, in drawers. In the US, these come in two sizes: for letter-size paper and legal-size paper. Foreign firms offer filing cabinets that permit A4 paper to be used in addition to letter-size. Double file cabinets whose drawers each can accommodate two racks for folders side by side. UK file cabinets are slightly different from US in the width of the rails which support the suspension files, the US ones being narrower; the UK sizes are known as A4, foolscap and A3.
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