August 7, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the differing fates of the Robertson and the Phillips head screwdrivers demonstrate that innovation is intimately tied to historical events. Here’s The History Guy with the story of the screwdriver wars.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
This is our American Stories, and our next story comes
from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.
His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people
of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy has also
heard right here on our American Stories. Here's the History
Guy with the story of the screwdriver wars.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Screws as fasteners were not apparently produced until around the
fifteenth century. At there's no mention as in the late
fifteenth century manuscript. Their initial use was as a fastener
for parts of medieval jousting armor, and in nearly the
same period for early firearms. The earliest screwdrivers were built
to service these weapons, and they were called either a
screw turner or a turn screw, and they had a
(00:58):
pair shape wooden handle and always looked a lot like
a modern flat headed screwdriver. But these screws and screwdrivers
would have been custom made and used on very expensive
devices like wheel locks and jousting armor, and so screws
were not for the common folk. In seventeen sixty, brothers
Job and William Wyatt of Staffordshire patented a screwmaking machine
(01:20):
that used a file to cut in the threads following
the pitch of a lead screw. This allowed mass production
of screws and was a precursor to industrial mass production machines.
The idea of using a lathe of some sort of
cut threads was variously improved upon until the process for
cold rolling threads was perfected in the eighteen eighties. But
virtually all of these screws used just a few turning methods,
(01:42):
either a hexagon or square that was turned externally or
a flat slot cut to turn internally, and as anyone
who has ever used one knows, flat headed screws and
screwdrivers have their problems, but solutions were on the horizon.
Peter L. Robertson was born and hauled Men County, Ontario,
Canada in eighteen seventy nine. Tinkerer Robertson produced a number
(02:05):
of inventions, including a new design for cufflins and even
a better mouse trap. In nineteen oh five, received a
patent in Canada for a new design of a corkscrew
that centered itself on the bottle. Around the turn of
the century, Robertson was working through Eastern Canada is what
was called a high pitchman, meaning a traveling salesman for
a Philadelphia tool company. High pitchmen would sell their wares,
(02:26):
say on a street corner at County Fair, calling out
their wares. Among the things that he was selling was
the device of his own design. Robert's twentieth century wrench
brace was a multi tool that could be used as
a monkey wrench, as a brace, as a bench vice,
as a screwdriver. While demonstrating the screwdriver, which was flat bladed,
the blade slipped and seriously cut his hand. That gave
(02:47):
him the idea of a new type of screwdriver head
that was less likely to slip or cam out. In
eighteen seventy five, Alan Cummings of New York City had
been granted a patent for a screw that used a
cavity either a square or triangle, rather than a slot,
to address the same problem. Cummings description noted, it is
well known that the ordinary screwhead provided with a slot
(03:08):
is very susceptible to injury caused mainly by the slipping
of the screwdriver from the slot when the screws being
set home in wood or metal. By emitting the usual
slot and using the proper shaped cavity and screwdriver, perfect
safety is insured to the metallic cap. But Cummings design
had a flaw. The way that you made the cavity
that the screwdriver fit into was by stamping it with
(03:29):
a die and stamping it deeply enough that the screwdriver
would set inside, it would deform or weaken the screw head.
Robertson had a better solution, which he applied for a
patent in nineteen oh seven. His screw tapered the sides
of the crew gradually down to a pyramid shape. This
not only prevented the head from being deformed, but actually
helped align the metal grain, as he explained, knitting the
atoms together for greater strength. It had the added advantage
(03:53):
of less waste, since the slot of a slot headed
screw was usually cut out, losing a bit of metal
and weakening the head of the screw. Because it was
less likely to cam out, you could use more torque
with the Robertson screw and driver. As it was self centering,
it could be used with one hand or as a
slotted screw driver usually required two. The head of the
screw was less likely to deform, and the Robertson screwdriver
(04:14):
was much better able to still remove the screw. If
it did, it also worked better than the slotted screw
if the screw had been painted over. Robertson's screw and
driver were particularly attractive to furniture makers and boat builders,
where it was more of a problem if a flathead
screw cammed out, because it would damage the material around
it damage the value of the product. But perhaps best
(04:34):
of all is that robertson screw could be cold form.
That is, because the stamp tapered down inside the screw.
That meant that you could build the screw without ever
having to heat the metal. Cummings design, as ingenious as
it was, probably was never made during its patent life
because the screw simply couldn't be easily manufactured. But Robertson's
(04:55):
design could be cheaply manufactured in the millions. His invention
the biggest little invention of the twentieth century so far.
Robertson gained enough investors to open the P. L. Robertson
Manufacturing Company Limited in nineteen oh eight. He built a
factory in Milton, Ontario, which gave him tax breaks and
a ten thousand dollars loan. The patent was approved February
(05:17):
nineteen oh nine, and by then the company was already
filling orders. Robertson was just thirty years old. While the
Robertson Company described the initial years as hard, with local
competitors even challenging their patent, the Robertson screw slully gained
adherents among boat builders and furniture makers. In nineteen thirteen,
Fisher Autobody opened a factory in Walkerville, Ontario, making wooden
(05:39):
parts for the Ford Model T. The Robertson screw offered
a great advantage for manufacturing, and Fisher became one of
Robertson's largest customers, using some seven hundred screws per body.
Robertson letters designed a screw for metal to use on
the all metal body of the Ford Model A. Having
been awarded international patents, Robertson saw the opportunity to expand
(05:59):
a broad and so he went to Gillingham, England, and
established a company called the Recess Screw Company. He marketed
to British industry using the slogan the screw that grips
the driver, but his real plan was to manufacture screws
in England, but sell them in Germany and Russia. In
the First World War in the Russian Revolution foiled his plan.
(06:20):
Recess Screws turned to war production during the Great War
and produced things like firing needles and hand grenade pens,
but after the war, Recess Crews failed. There seems to
have been several factors involved, including a glot of supply
following the war, and the actions of some unscrupulous investors.
But Robertson resigned as a director of the company. But
the company in Canada was still doing well, and Robertson
looked to expand into the United States. Then Henry Ford
(06:43):
came to the table. An analysis had shown that the
use of Robertson Screws and the Ford plants in Canada
had saved two dollars and sixty cents a car, of
significant savings for car that retail for only three hundred
and ninety dollars in which was being produced in the millions.
Ford wanted to use Robertson Screws in all his US plants,
but Ford wanted to say in production in an exclusive contract,
(07:03):
and Robertson stubbornly refused to give up that control. When
the deal fell through, Robertson not only did not get
the contract, for the American Ford Plants, but lost the
contracts in Canada, almost a third of his business. After
three failed tries, Robertson decided to never try to license
his screws outside of Canada again, but his marketing skills
made his screws and drivers the screwdrivers of choice in Canada,
(07:26):
even though just across the border of the United States
they're hardly known at all. But Ford was still using
flat screws, which were even more troublesome on automated assembly lines,
where if a screw cammed out it cost time and
slow manufacturing. The solutions started with a patent application in
nineteen thirty two by John P. Thompson, an auto mechanic
living in Portland, Oregon. Thompson's solution was similar to Robertson's.
(07:49):
By tapering, the screw had a stardi could be used
without distorting the medal, and again stamping. The taper design
made the medal actually stronger. In nineteen thirty three, when
the pat was granted, Thompson assigned it to Henry Frank Phillips.
Like Robertson, Henry Phillips had been a traveling salesman by
the time that Patton was assigned to him. He was
the managing director of a mining concern, the Oregon Copper Company.
(08:13):
It's not only clear why Thompson assigned the patent to Phillips,
but Phillips refined the design and was granted more patents.
Unlike Robertson, Phillips did not intend to manufacture screws, but
hoped to license the patents to manufacture and collect royalties.
Not surprisingly, with new invention, Phillips got a lot of
rejections from companies who told me the idea lack promise
for commercial success. But eventually Phillips convinced Eugene E. Clarke
(08:35):
of the American Screw Company of Providence, Rhode Island, to
manufacture the design. By nineteen thirty four, the screw was
available for consumers. In nineteen thirty six, General Motors was
invited to test the design. The Phillips head screw first
went into use at GM making the nineteen thirty six Cadillac.
Customers raved about the amount of worktime saved. Within just
(08:55):
a few years, virtually all US automakers, including Ford, were
using Phillips headscrews. The airplane manufacturing and railroad industry likewise switched.
By nineteen thirty nine, twenty companies had licenses to produce
Phillips head screws. By nineteen forty, eighty five percent of
US screw manufacturers had a license for the design, and
the company grows more than one point three million adjusted dollars.
(09:19):
While the Second World War limited foreign licenses, it established
the Phillips head screw as an industry standard among wartime manufacturers.
The hundreds of thousands of planes and motor vehicles built
by the US during the war were largely screwed together
using Phillips headscrews. While Robertson had Canada, Phillips screws are
by industry estimates, by far of the most popular type
of screw everywhere else in the world. The Robertson and
(09:42):
Phillips screws were the culmination of the development of screw
technology over a couple one hundred years, and they were
two types that rose to the top in an era
where there was a lot of innovation in the field.
It's really ironic that the events of the First World
War were part of the reason that the Robertson screw
was never developed internationally, whereas events the Second World War
where the reason that the Philip said it screw was
(10:04):
and the relative fates between the two say that invention
isn't about just the inspiration and pun intended drive of
the inventor, but of a complex interaction with historical forces
and powerful personalities, things that can impact every tool in
the toolbox.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And you've been listening to the History Guy. If you
want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to his
YouTube channel, The History Guy Colin History deserves to be remembered.
The story of the screwdriver war here on our American
Stories
This is our American Stories, and our next story comes
from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.
His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people
of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy has also
heard right here on our American Stories. Here's the History
Guy with the story of the screwdriver wars.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Screws as fasteners were not apparently produced until around the
fifteenth century. At there's no mention as in the late
fifteenth century manuscript. Their initial use was as a fastener
for parts of medieval jousting armor, and in nearly the
same period for early firearms. The earliest screwdrivers were built
to service these weapons, and they were called either a
screw turner or a turn screw, and they had a
(00:58):
pair shape wooden handle and always looked a lot like
a modern flat headed screwdriver. But these screws and screwdrivers
would have been custom made and used on very expensive
devices like wheel locks and jousting armor, and so screws
were not for the common folk. In seventeen sixty, brothers
Job and William Wyatt of Staffordshire patented a screwmaking machine
(01:20):
that used a file to cut in the threads following
the pitch of a lead screw. This allowed mass production
of screws and was a precursor to industrial mass production machines.
The idea of using a lathe of some sort of
cut threads was variously improved upon until the process for
cold rolling threads was perfected in the eighteen eighties. But
virtually all of these screws used just a few turning methods,
(01:42):
either a hexagon or square that was turned externally or
a flat slot cut to turn internally, and as anyone
who has ever used one knows, flat headed screws and
screwdrivers have their problems, but solutions were on the horizon.
Peter L. Robertson was born and hauled Men County, Ontario,
Canada in eighteen seventy nine. Tinkerer Robertson produced a number
(02:05):
of inventions, including a new design for cufflins and even
a better mouse trap. In nineteen oh five, received a
patent in Canada for a new design of a corkscrew
that centered itself on the bottle. Around the turn of
the century, Robertson was working through Eastern Canada is what
was called a high pitchman, meaning a traveling salesman for
a Philadelphia tool company. High pitchmen would sell their wares,
(02:26):
say on a street corner at County Fair, calling out
their wares. Among the things that he was selling was
the device of his own design. Robert's twentieth century wrench
brace was a multi tool that could be used as
a monkey wrench, as a brace, as a bench vice,
as a screwdriver. While demonstrating the screwdriver, which was flat bladed,
the blade slipped and seriously cut his hand. That gave
(02:47):
him the idea of a new type of screwdriver head
that was less likely to slip or cam out. In
eighteen seventy five, Alan Cummings of New York City had
been granted a patent for a screw that used a
cavity either a square or triangle, rather than a slot,
to address the same problem. Cummings description noted, it is
well known that the ordinary screwhead provided with a slot
(03:08):
is very susceptible to injury caused mainly by the slipping
of the screwdriver from the slot when the screws being
set home in wood or metal. By emitting the usual
slot and using the proper shaped cavity and screwdriver, perfect
safety is insured to the metallic cap. But Cummings design
had a flaw. The way that you made the cavity
that the screwdriver fit into was by stamping it with
(03:29):
a die and stamping it deeply enough that the screwdriver
would set inside, it would deform or weaken the screw head.
Robertson had a better solution, which he applied for a
patent in nineteen oh seven. His screw tapered the sides
of the crew gradually down to a pyramid shape. This
not only prevented the head from being deformed, but actually
helped align the metal grain, as he explained, knitting the
atoms together for greater strength. It had the added advantage
(03:53):
of less waste, since the slot of a slot headed
screw was usually cut out, losing a bit of metal
and weakening the head of the screw. Because it was
less likely to cam out, you could use more torque
with the Robertson screw and driver. As it was self centering,
it could be used with one hand or as a
slotted screw driver usually required two. The head of the
screw was less likely to deform, and the Robertson screwdriver
(04:14):
was much better able to still remove the screw. If
it did, it also worked better than the slotted screw
if the screw had been painted over. Robertson's screw and
driver were particularly attractive to furniture makers and boat builders,
where it was more of a problem if a flathead
screw cammed out, because it would damage the material around
it damage the value of the product. But perhaps best
(04:34):
of all is that robertson screw could be cold form.
That is, because the stamp tapered down inside the screw.
That meant that you could build the screw without ever
having to heat the metal. Cummings design, as ingenious as
it was, probably was never made during its patent life
because the screw simply couldn't be easily manufactured. But Robertson's
(04:55):
design could be cheaply manufactured in the millions. His invention
the biggest little invention of the twentieth century so far.
Robertson gained enough investors to open the P. L. Robertson
Manufacturing Company Limited in nineteen oh eight. He built a
factory in Milton, Ontario, which gave him tax breaks and
a ten thousand dollars loan. The patent was approved February
(05:17):
nineteen oh nine, and by then the company was already
filling orders. Robertson was just thirty years old. While the
Robertson Company described the initial years as hard, with local
competitors even challenging their patent, the Robertson screw slully gained
adherents among boat builders and furniture makers. In nineteen thirteen,
Fisher Autobody opened a factory in Walkerville, Ontario, making wooden
(05:39):
parts for the Ford Model T. The Robertson screw offered
a great advantage for manufacturing, and Fisher became one of
Robertson's largest customers, using some seven hundred screws per body.
Robertson letters designed a screw for metal to use on
the all metal body of the Ford Model A. Having
been awarded international patents, Robertson saw the opportunity to expand
(05:59):
a broad and so he went to Gillingham, England, and
established a company called the Recess Screw Company. He marketed
to British industry using the slogan the screw that grips
the driver, but his real plan was to manufacture screws
in England, but sell them in Germany and Russia. In
the First World War in the Russian Revolution foiled his plan.
(06:20):
Recess Screws turned to war production during the Great War
and produced things like firing needles and hand grenade pens,
but after the war, Recess Crews failed. There seems to
have been several factors involved, including a glot of supply
following the war, and the actions of some unscrupulous investors.
But Robertson resigned as a director of the company. But
the company in Canada was still doing well, and Robertson
looked to expand into the United States. Then Henry Ford
(06:43):
came to the table. An analysis had shown that the
use of Robertson Screws and the Ford plants in Canada
had saved two dollars and sixty cents a car, of
significant savings for car that retail for only three hundred
and ninety dollars in which was being produced in the millions.
Ford wanted to use Robertson Screws in all his US plants,
but Ford wanted to say in production in an exclusive contract,
(07:03):
and Robertson stubbornly refused to give up that control. When
the deal fell through, Robertson not only did not get
the contract, for the American Ford Plants, but lost the
contracts in Canada, almost a third of his business. After
three failed tries, Robertson decided to never try to license
his screws outside of Canada again, but his marketing skills
made his screws and drivers the screwdrivers of choice in Canada,
(07:26):
even though just across the border of the United States
they're hardly known at all. But Ford was still using
flat screws, which were even more troublesome on automated assembly lines,
where if a screw cammed out it cost time and
slow manufacturing. The solutions started with a patent application in
nineteen thirty two by John P. Thompson, an auto mechanic
living in Portland, Oregon. Thompson's solution was similar to Robertson's.
(07:49):
By tapering, the screw had a stardi could be used
without distorting the medal, and again stamping. The taper design
made the medal actually stronger. In nineteen thirty three, when
the pat was granted, Thompson assigned it to Henry Frank Phillips.
Like Robertson, Henry Phillips had been a traveling salesman by
the time that Patton was assigned to him. He was
the managing director of a mining concern, the Oregon Copper Company.
(08:13):
It's not only clear why Thompson assigned the patent to Phillips,
but Phillips refined the design and was granted more patents.
Unlike Robertson, Phillips did not intend to manufacture screws, but
hoped to license the patents to manufacture and collect royalties.
Not surprisingly, with new invention, Phillips got a lot of
rejections from companies who told me the idea lack promise
for commercial success. But eventually Phillips convinced Eugene E. Clarke
(08:35):
of the American Screw Company of Providence, Rhode Island, to
manufacture the design. By nineteen thirty four, the screw was
available for consumers. In nineteen thirty six, General Motors was
invited to test the design. The Phillips head screw first
went into use at GM making the nineteen thirty six Cadillac.
Customers raved about the amount of worktime saved. Within just
(08:55):
a few years, virtually all US automakers, including Ford, were
using Phillips headscrews. The airplane manufacturing and railroad industry likewise switched.
By nineteen thirty nine, twenty companies had licenses to produce
Phillips head screws. By nineteen forty, eighty five percent of
US screw manufacturers had a license for the design, and
the company grows more than one point three million adjusted dollars.
(09:19):
While the Second World War limited foreign licenses, it established
the Phillips head screw as an industry standard among wartime manufacturers.
The hundreds of thousands of planes and motor vehicles built
by the US during the war were largely screwed together
using Phillips headscrews. While Robertson had Canada, Phillips screws are
by industry estimates, by far of the most popular type
of screw everywhere else in the world. The Robertson and
(09:42):
Phillips screws were the culmination of the development of screw
technology over a couple one hundred years, and they were
two types that rose to the top in an era
where there was a lot of innovation in the field.
It's really ironic that the events of the First World
War were part of the reason that the Robertson screw
was never developed internationally, whereas events the Second World War
where the reason that the Philip said it screw was
(10:04):
and the relative fates between the two say that invention
isn't about just the inspiration and pun intended drive of
the inventor, but of a complex interaction with historical forces
and powerful personalities, things that can impact every tool in
the toolbox.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And you've been listening to the History Guy. If you
want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to his
YouTube channel, The History Guy Colin History deserves to be remembered.
The story of the screwdriver war here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.