A screw is any shaft with a corkscrew-shaped groove formed on its surface. Screws are used to fasten two objects together. A screwdriver is a tool for driving (turning) screws; screwdrivers have a tip that fits into the head of a screw.
Early Screws
Around the first century CE, screw-shaped tools became common, however, historians do not know who invented the first. Early screws were made from wood and were used in wine presses, olive oil presses, and for pressing clothes. Metal screws and nuts used to fasten two objects together first appeared in the fifteenth century.
In , English instrument maker, Jesse Ramsden (&#;) invented the first satisfactory screw-cutting lathe, and went on to inspire other inventors. In , Englishman Henry Maudslay (&#;) invented a large screw-cutting lathe that made it possible to mass-produce accurately sized screws. In , American machinist David Wilkinson (&#;) also invented machinery for the mass production of threaded metal screws.
Robertson Screw
In , square-drive screws were invented by Canadian P. L. Robertson (&#;), 28 years before Henry Phillips patented his Phillips head screws, which are also square-drive screws. The Robertson screw is considered the "first recess-drive type fastener practical for production usage." The design became a North American standard, as published in the "Industrial Fasteners Institute Book of Fastener Standards." A square-drive head on a screw is an improvement over the slot head because the screwdriver will not slip out of the screw's head during installation. The early 20th century Model T car made by the Ford Motor Company (one of Robertson's first customers) used over seven hundred Robertson screws.
Phillips Head Screw and Other Improvements
In the early s, the Phillips head screw was invented by Oregon businessman Henry Phillips (&#;). Automobile manufacturers now used car assembly lines. They needed screws that could take greater torque and could provide tighter fastenings. The Phillips head screw was compatible with the automated screwdrivers used in an assembly line.
A hexagonal or hex screw head has a hexagonal hole turned by an Allen key. An Allen key (or Allen wrench) is a hexagonally shaped turning tool (wrench), was first produced by William G. Allen of the Allen Manufacturing Company in Connecticut; who patented it first debatable.
In , the flat-bladed bit for the carpenter's brace was invented, the precursor to the first simple screwdriver. Handheld screwdrivers first appeared after .
Types of Screws
Myriad types of screws have been invented to perform specific tasks.
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Shapes of Screw Head
Types of Screw Drive
A variety of tools exists to drive screws into the material to be fixed. The hand tools used to drive slot-headed and cross-headed screws are called screwdrivers. A power tool that does the same job is a power screwdriver. The hand-tool for driving cap screws and other types is called a spanner (U.K. usage) or wrench (U.S. usage).
Nuts
Nuts are square, round, or hexagonal metal blocks with a screw thread on the inside. Nuts help fasten objects together and are used with screws or bolts.
Sources and Further Information
The Phillips screw and driver, originally invented by Portlander John P. Thompson, dramatically increased the speed of manufacturing and made the Phillips screwdriver a necessity in every toolbox. Thompson applied for the patent rights on a "Screw" (U.S. Patent ) with an innovative &#;cruciform groove&#; and a matching "Screw driver" (U.S. Patent ) in . Although not the first screw of its kind&#;English inventor John Frearson had patented a screw with a &#;cruciform orifice&#; some sixty years earlier&#;Thompson&#;s invention eventually revolutionized assembly lines.
Little information remains about Thompson. Born in Wagner, Iowa, in , he moved to Portland in or from Bismarck, North Dakota. His occupations are listed in Polk's Portland Directory as &#;furnished rooms&#; and &#;laborer,&#; although census records indicate that he had worked as a bank cashier and in real estate before moving to Oregon. A Sunday Oregonian article from stated that Thompson, who died in Portland on September 4, , had been an auto mechanic when he invented the screw.
When the patents were granted in , the rights were assigned "By Direct and Mesne Assignments" to Henry F. Phillips, the managing director of the Oregon Copper Company, a mining outfit in eastern Oregon. The wording on the patent means that it was awarded directly to Henry Phillips, even though Thompson is credited with the invention. There is no locally available information as to why Thompson transferred the rights to Phillips, but there may have been a relationship between Phillips and Thompson predating the issuance of the patent, and perhaps even the application for the patent.
After obtaining the first two patents, Phillips formed the Phillips Screw Company in Portland in with the aim of licensing the design to manufacturers and collecting the royalties. He soon persuaded E.E Clark, the president of the American Screw Company, to manufacture the screw, and in the next four years the Phillips Screw Company had obtained six additional patents modifying the design. By the screw was available to consumers, and the first industrial customer was General Motors, which used Phillips screws to build Cadillac automobiles in . Soon after, it was adopted by the railroad and aviation industries.
Until the invention of the Phillips screw, American assembly lines, craftsmen, and consumers used regular, slotted-head screws. But that design was problematic for three reasons: it was difficult to align the driver with the screw aperture; the driver tended to slip from the open ends; and the slot required a closely matching bit. The cruciform drive addressed those problems.
Although the Phillips screw became ubiquitous through its usefulness on the assembly line, it is unknown whether Thompson or Phillips originally intended the invention to specifically solve the challenges presented by regular head screws in manufacturing. Thompson's original patent for a "Screw driver" (U.S. ) featured a diagram of a manual screwdriver, with no mention of the specific applications for which the invention was intended, primarily being concerned with the feasibility of manufacturing the design. U.S patent , filed by Phillips in and granted in , mentions driving "either by hand or by power-driven types of tool." The same patent also mentions that the "failure of the slotted screw to retain the blade-driver, especially in power driven operations, is not only dangerous to the operator, but is likewise, always injurious to the work," indicating that by it had occurred to Phillips that the assembly line was a ripe market.
By , twenty companies had licenses to produce Phillips screws worldwide. In , the Phillips Screw Company grossed $77,421 ($1,323,000 adjusted for inflation), almost all of it in royalties. By then the Phillips screw was in use by nearly every major American automobile manufacturer, as well as by railroad and airplane builders.
The wars raging in Europe and the Pacific drove growth in manufacturing, and Phillips&#;s company was able to ride the wave of the war boom. As the war effort gave, however, it also took away. Phillips Screw Company depended on licensing the design to foreign manufacturers to grow, and World War II restricted the countries that the company could reliably do business with. In , for example, one licensee, the J. Osawa Company, was ramping up production in Kyoto, Japan; but by Japan had broken off trade relations with the United States, likely making it difficult for Phillips to collect license fees.
Henry Phillips retired in . In , the U.S. government filed suit against the Phillips Screw Company and seventeen manufacturers of Phillips screws and drivers alleging anti-competitive practices dating back to . They were charged with patent pooling, cartel practices, price-fixing, and the suppression of competing technologies. The case, United States v. Phillips Screw Co., was tried in the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois (Chicago). The case was concluded in with a consent decree that dissolved the patent pool, likely making it difficult to protect the collection of patents that the company relied upon to protect its intellectual property. In any case, unlicensed companies had earlier begun to produce similar competing designs, some of which were convinced to buy into the licensing agreement. Other manufacturers, however, said that their designs were not based on the Phillips design, but on the older, unprotected Frearson design. In the same year, a final refinement was patented on the Phillips drive system by an engineer from the American Screw Company; that patent expired in .
Henry Phillips died in his home at the Ione Plaza Apartments in Portland on April 13, ; he was sixty-eight years old. Although the Phillips drive system remains far and away the most widely used internal screw-driving system&#;industry estimates indicate that it is used in at least half of all internally driven screws&#;it is being steadily replaced by newer technologies. From its current headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, the Phillips Screw Company continues to develop and license drive systems that are replacing its founding technology.
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