The "Gem" punch was made by the McGill Metal Products Company of Marengo, Illinois. The McGill Ticket Punch Company of Chicago was in business beginning in the late 1800's. In 1910, the company was incorporated as the McGill Metal Products Company. In the early 1920's, George F. McGill, the founder's son, was head of the company. On a business trip by train, he got talking to the mayor of Marango,Illinois, who enticed him to build the company's new factory in that city. In 1932, the company rocketed to success, literally with a better mousetrap. The original "Little Nipper" mousetrap was invented in Britain in 1897 by James Henry Atkinson. Among the many who tried to improve on it were two brothers, Herbert and William Stilson. In the early decades of the 20th century they patented several "self-set" mousetraps and manufactured them at the Stilson Specialty Company in Dubuque, Iowa.
Eventually, they assigned a number of these patents to the McGill firm. The company actually copyrighted the phrase, "The Better Mousetrap," and even had a mousetrap proving ground located in an old cow auction barn. (There is actually a privately-operated Trap History Museum in Galloway, Ohio with displays of over 4000 animal traps!) George McGill passed away in 1942, and ownership of his company was purchased by two employees who continued to make the mousetraps and the paper punches, improving on them as shown in the patent number stamped on my own punch:
By 1968, they were producing about 14,000 punches daily and selling nearly 2 million of them each year. That same year, they introduced punches for data processing systems, including one used in the a missile program at Cape Kennedy. The company did no out-sourcing and by 1971 employed 125 people. In 1986, the owners were approaching their 80's and sold the company to two businessmen who promised to keep the product lines. In fact, they immediately sold the mousetrap line to the Ekco Group, McGill's biggest competitor, and closed down that production line. The McGill line of punches has since become part of the Advantus Corporation, and the name applied to scrap-book stamping equipment. In 2013, the property, equipment and memorabilia of the former McGill firm were sold off, and the factory building was bought by the Marengo United Methodist Church which hopes to stave off the downtown decline by using it as a daycare or community use centre.