ECCO version 3.0 was released in the summer of 1995 with an updated user interface based on a ring binder.[11]

Finally, in 1904, the more recognizable modern concept for the three-ring binder was patented in the United States . . . by the Irving-Pitt Manufacturing Company of Kansas City.

If you believe ACCO Brands’ own corporate website, in fact, Wilson-Jones was actually the company that “invented the three-ring binder“

Ralph Wilson (b. 1870 in Paolo, KS) was something of a notorious showman, prone to exaggeration and theatricality during his two decades as company president. These were traits he’d picked up in his youth, when he spent several years touring with the Ringling Brothers caravan show, serving as the big top’s “advance man,” or glorified publicist. The weird leap from the three-ring circus to three-ring binders, apparently, was merely a logical next step.