April 15, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the differing fates of the Robertson and Phillips-head screwdrivers demonstrate that innovation is intimately tied to historical events. Here’s the History Guy with the story of the screwdriver wars.
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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 Guys 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 fasters were not apparently produced until around the
fifteenth century. There's no mention as in a late fifteenth
century manuscript. Their initial use was as a faster 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
(00:56):
turner or a turn screw, and they had a pair
shape wooden handle in other wise 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
(01:16):
Job and William Wyatt of Staffordshire patented a screwmaking machine
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
(01:39):
virtually all of these screws used just a few turning methods,
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,
(02:01):
Canada in eighteen seventy nine. Tinkerer Robertson produced a number
of inventions, including a new design for cufflinks 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 traveling salesman for a
(02:22):
Philadelphia Tool Company. High pitchmen would sell their wares, say
on a street corner at a 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,
(02:44):
the blade slipped and seriously cut his hand. That gave
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
(03:06):
well known that the ordinary screwhead provided with a slot
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 admitting 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
(03:27):
that the screwdriver fit into was by stamping it with
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 squawer 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
(03:49):
atoms together for greater strength. It had the added advantage
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
(04:11):
screw was less likely to deform, and the Robertson screwdriver
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
(04:31):
it damage the value of the product. But perhaps best
of all is that robertson screw could be cold formed.
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. 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 nineteen
(05:17):
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 sully gained adherents among
boat builders and furniture makers. In nineteen thirteen, Fisher Autobody
opened a factory in Walkerville, Ontario, making wooden parts for
(05:39):
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 a braw and so
(06:00):
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,
the Russian Revolution foiled his plan. Recess Screws turned to
(06:21):
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 glots 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 came to the table. An
(06:44):
analysis had shown that the use of Robertson Screws and
the Ford plants in Canada had saved two dollars and
sixty cents a car, the significant savings for car that
retail for only three hundred 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 and an exclusive contract, and Robertson stubbornly
(07:04):
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, even though just
(07:27):
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 slowed 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. By tapering, the screw
(07:50):
had a star dyke could be used without distorting the medal,
and again stamping. The taper design made the medal actually stronger.
In nineteen thirty three, when the patent 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. It's not only
(08:13):
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 them the idea lack promise for commercial success.
But eventually Phillips convinced Eugene E. Clark of the American
(08:35):
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 a few years,
(08:56):
virtually all US automakers, including Ford, were Usinghllips 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. While the Second
(09:19):
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
heads screws, 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 Phillips
(09:43):
screws were the culmination of the development 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 and the
(10:04):
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't 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 Guys 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 fasters were not apparently produced until around the
fifteenth century. There's no mention as in a late fifteenth
century manuscript. Their initial use was as a faster 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
(00:56):
turner or a turn screw, and they had a pair
shape wooden handle in other wise 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
(01:16):
Job and William Wyatt of Staffordshire patented a screwmaking machine
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
(01:39):
virtually all of these screws used just a few turning methods,
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,
(02:01):
Canada in eighteen seventy nine. Tinkerer Robertson produced a number
of inventions, including a new design for cufflinks 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 traveling salesman for a
(02:22):
Philadelphia Tool Company. High pitchmen would sell their wares, say
on a street corner at a 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,
(02:44):
the blade slipped and seriously cut his hand. That gave
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
(03:06):
well known that the ordinary screwhead provided with a slot
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 admitting 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
(03:27):
that the screwdriver fit into was by stamping it with
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 squawer 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
(03:49):
atoms together for greater strength. It had the added advantage
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
(04:11):
screw was less likely to deform, and the Robertson screwdriver
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
(04:31):
it damage the value of the product. But perhaps best
of all is that robertson screw could be cold formed.
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. 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 nineteen
(05:17):
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 sully gained adherents among
boat builders and furniture makers. In nineteen thirteen, Fisher Autobody
opened a factory in Walkerville, Ontario, making wooden parts for
(05:39):
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 a braw and so
(06:00):
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,
the Russian Revolution foiled his plan. Recess Screws turned to
(06:21):
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 glots 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 came to the table. An
(06:44):
analysis had shown that the use of Robertson Screws and
the Ford plants in Canada had saved two dollars and
sixty cents a car, the significant savings for car that
retail for only three hundred 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 and an exclusive contract, and Robertson stubbornly
(07:04):
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, even though just
(07:27):
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 slowed 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. By tapering, the screw
(07:50):
had a star dyke could be used without distorting the medal,
and again stamping. The taper design made the medal actually stronger.
In nineteen thirty three, when the patent 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. It's not only
(08:13):
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 them the idea lack promise for commercial success.
But eventually Phillips convinced Eugene E. Clark of the American
(08:35):
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 a few years,
(08:56):
virtually all US automakers, including Ford, were Usinghllips 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. While the Second
(09:19):
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
heads screws, 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 Phillips
(09:43):
screws were the culmination of the development 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 and the
(10:04):
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't 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
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