Origin of Cardboard Box

Few inventions have blended as seamlessly into our daily living routines as the humble cardboard box. During the 1st and 2nd century, the Han Dynasty of China was pioneering the use of paper. During the same era, sheets of bark from the Mulberry tree were used to wrap and protect food, one of the earliest examples of a sturdy, wood-based product being re-purposed for packaging.
The earliest form of the cardboard box as we know it today did not appear until the 1817 German board game The Game of Besieging. Throughout the 19th century, companies began using the boxes as a means of storage and transport for cereals and even for moth eggs used by silk manufacturers.
A pleat was needed in order to turn these carriers into something more durable. During 1856, top hat peddlers Edward Allen and Edward Healey used a stiffer paper made with a fluted sheet in the middle of two layers to provide stability and warmth to the lining. It was a precursor to corrugated cardboard.
The breakthrough came during 1879, when Robert Gair, owner of a Brooklyn paper factory, figured out he could both score a single sheet of cardboard and then have his printing press cut it at the same time, eliminating hand-cutting.
Gair sold consumer product companies on this handy new form of storage, eventually receiving a 2-million-piece order from Nabisco. Snack foods could now travel without the danger of being crushed, and soon the cardboard box was migrating from kitchen cupboards to anywhere a cheap, effective form of packaging was needed.

During the 1930s, the Finnish government adopted the boxes as part of a take-home maternity package for new mothers who may not have been able to afford cribs. Babies took their first naps in the mattress-lined box.