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Jack Linsky
Jack Linsky was a revolutionary inventor, businessman, philanthropist, and art collector who is credited with creating the Swingline Stapler.

Early Life
Linsky was an immigrant at the young age of 14 in 1914 from Northern Russia. He soon married Belle Linsky of Kiev. Jack used his wit to make office work more sustainable in New York City's Lower East Side. In his business travels, Linsky went to Europe in the 1920s and came back with an idea for a stapling machine that would more or less revolutionize the industry," explained Alan Seff, Lenore (his daughter) ex-husband, who worked for his father-in-law from 1946 to 1960. "It was what we call an open channel. Before, in order to load a stapling machine, you practically needed a screwdriver and a hammer to put the staples in. He and his engineers devised a patented unit where you just opened the top of the machine, and you'd plunk the staples in. And that was what made his company; of course he was a great businessman and all that, but the invention of the open-channel stapling machine was what made the company a success."

To stand in the Linsky Galleries today and gaze upon their seventeenth-century ewer—a small pitcher of smoky crystal covered in a riot of gold and diamonds, made in the Prague workshop of Ferdinand Eusebio Miseroni—is to stand in awe of the ingenuity of American capitalism. Staples into gold.

Philanthropy
Jack Linsky made so much money that in 1965 he could endow the Belle and Jack Linsky Pavilion at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan for $1 million. When he finally decided to let go of his empire in 1970, Jack and Belle's "stationery" business was purchased by American Brands for $210 million (about $1,172,173,453.5 in 2008). Linsky sold so well that in London in 1964, Belle could afford to pay $176,400 for a Louis XVI marquetry commode, at that time the record price for a single piece of French period furniture sold at auction. Their exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art host beautiful Picassos, Bonnards, Monets as well as many BC era items and royal porcelains. Linsky got so rich selling that Howard Pollack described their Fifth Avenue apartment as "a museum—they had a lot of it roped off because it was so valuable. You had to sit in another room."

Legacy
Jack and Belle had two daughters, Muriel Linsky Karasik and Lenore Hecht. Muriel was married to Richard Karasik and Lenore to Alan Seff. Muriel was a second generation art collector who held art galleries on Madison Avenue and in Southampton New York. Muriel Karasik was beloved mother to Richard and Lori Mintzer, David and Nancy Mintzer, Elisabeth Mintzer Frankel, Albert and Victoria Benalloul and Charles and Elena Karasik and beloved grandmother of Alex Frankel, Isaiah Frankel, Zach Frankel, Rebekah Karasik, Sam Karasik, Adam Mintzer, Andrew Mintzer, Gabby Mintzer. Benjamin Benalloul, Olivia Benalloul, Spencer Benalloul, Jake Benalloul.