One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw

by Rybczynski, Witold

  I had forgotten the screwdriver. I go back to my standard reference on hand tools, William Louis Goodman’s History of Woodworking Tools, published in 1964. Goodman was a thirty-year veteran of teaching wood shop in an English boys’ school. He was also a tool collector. I have the impression that he was someone who not only knew a lot about the origin of the Saxon adze, but could also give a handy personal demonstration of its proper use.

  I look up screwdriver in Goodman’s index—nothing. That’s odd. Flipping through the book, I find an entire chapter on the carpenter’s bench, a meditation on the origin of the glue pot, but nothing about screwdrivers. Then a chart catches my eye: “Woodworkers’ Tool Kits at Various Periods.”11 It lists the times when various carpentry tools were invented and confirms what I already know—most hand tools originated during the Roman period. The Middle Ages added the carpenter’s brace; the Renaissance, some specialized planes. The next period, “1600 to 1800,” saw the invention of the spokeshave, a sort of pulling knife used to make wheel spokes and chair spindles. Finally, in “1800 to 1962,” I find the screwdriver. It is one of the last additions to the woodworker’s toolbox.

  Usually, my 1949 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is informative, but the entry “Screwdriver” is a simple definition—no history. The “Tools” entry does not even mention screwdrivers. I check the on-line Britannica, which is more helpful: “The handled screwdriver is shown on the woodworker’s bench after 1800 and appears in inventories of tool kits from that date.”12 At least it isn’t another Roman invention. I’m not convinced that the screwdriver is any more earthshaking than the carpenter’s brace, and it is a laughably simple tool. Still, I am puzzled by its late appearance. It is definitely worth looking into.

  * * *

  I. Traditional Japanese saws likewise are pulled rather than pushed. With paper-thin blades, they are used chiefly for delicate cabinetwork.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Turnscrews

  I START MY SEARCH for the origins of the screwdriver by consulting the Oxford English Dictionary. According to the citation, the first appearance in print of screwdriver was in 1812, in a book titled Mechanical Exercises. My university library has an original copy. It is a self-help manual for budding artisans written by a Glaswegian, Peter Nicholson. At the back of the book, in a list of definitions, I find the quote: “Screw Driver: a tool used to turn screws into their places.”1 Simple enough. Unfortunately, the author does not include an illustration. Nor does he mention the screwdriver anywhere else in the book; he either thought that the tool was little used—or else he took it for granted.

  In the introduction, Nicholson acknowledges his debt to Joseph Moxon, the author of the first systematic account in English of craftsmen’s tools and methods, published more than a hundred years earlier. Moxon, a friend of the diarist Samuel Pepys, was a printer by trade. His London shop, “under the Sign of Atlas in Warwick Lane,” sold not only books, but also maps, nautical charts, globes, and mathematical instruments. In 1678, to expand his business, Moxon began publishing how-to-do-it pamphlets for carpenters, bricklayers, and joiners. The booklets appeared monthly and sold for sixpence. In 1693, he compiled the series into a book. The 238 octavo pages, including eighteen copperplate engravings, was titled Mechanick Exercises.

  The endearing subtitle of Moxon’s book is “The Doctrine of Handy-Works.” “I may safely tell you,” the author advises in the preface, “that these are the Rules that every one that will endeavour to perform them must follow; and that by the true observing them, he may, according to his stock of Ingenuity and Diligence, sooner or later, inure his hand to the Cunning or Craft of working like a Handy-Craft.”2 Moxon begins his book by discussing smithing, “which comprehends not only the Black-Smith’s Trade, but takes in all the trades which use either Forge or File, from the Anchor-Smith, to the Watch-Maker; they all working by the same Rules, tho’ not with equal exactness, and all using the same Tools.” Moxon describes a screw-pin and a screw-plate, crude taps and dies used to make nuts and bolts to attach strap hinges to wooden doors. The bolts have square heads and are tightened with a wrench, which may be why Moxon does not mention a screwdriver, here or anywhere else in his book.

  I keep looking. There are false leads. I come across a reference to an ancient Greek dedicatory epigram that describes the tools of a carpenter and includes not only a plane and a hammer but also “four screwdrivers.”3 Since the author lived in the third century B.C., this would make the screwdriver ancient after all. I consult a classical scholar at the university. He points out that the Greek word translated as “screwdrivers” really means “tools to make holes,” for the “dowels” that are mentioned in the same line. So, not screwdrivers—bow drills.

  A comment in an addendum to a history of woodworking tools leads me to the entry on “Navigation” in the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In an illustration of a sextant and its accessories—interchangeable lenses, a magnifying glass, a key for adjusting the central mirror—is a clearly labeled wood-handled screwdriver.4 The third edition was published in 1797, which is fifteen years earlier than Nicholson’s Mechanical Exercises. I find an even older reference in the tenth edition of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. The citation quotes a York County, Virginia, will: “1 doz. draw rings, screw driver, and gimlet.”5 No illustration this time, but the date is April 28, 1779, thirty-three years before Nicholson. So, the OED is not infallible.

  Raphael A. Salaman’s Dictionary of Tools of 1975 is probably the most complete modern work of its kind. The British compilation includes several specialized screwdrivers: a slender electrician’s screwdriver; a tiny jeweler’s screwdriver; a stubby gunmaker’s screwdriver; and a short, heavy undertaker’s screwdriver for fastening coffin lids. Salaman dates the origin of the screwdriver slightly earlier than the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Wood screws were not extensively used by carpenters until the mid eighteenth century, and consequently the Screwdriver does not appear to have been commonly employed until after that time.”6 If screws were in use by 1750, I should be able to find a reference to screwdrivers earlier than 1779.

  Something else catches my eye. Salaman writes that “although nowadays the generally accepted name is Screwdriver, it appears from the trade catalogues and other literature that, at least in the Midlands and the North of England, the usual name was Turnscrew.”7 This is news to me. I can’t find an entry for turnscrew in any of my dictionaries. Yet Salaman is unequivocal. This raises an interesting question. Turnscrew, if such a word really exists, would be a literal translation of tournevis, French for “screwdriver.” Maybe the screwdriver was invented in France?

  In an encyclopedia of arts and crafts published in Paris in 1772, I find an entry by A. J. Roubo, a master cabinetmaker, who describes in detail how screws—“sold ready made”—are countersunk in brass plates and moldings inlaid into furniture. “The head of the screw is turned by means of a screwdriver,” he writes.8 The tournevis illustrated in an accompanying engraving is not the familiar hand tool but a flat-tipped bit for a carpenter’s brace. The brace actually makes an excellent screwdriver, since the crank of the handle greatly increases the torque and the continuous turning motion prevents the screw from “freezing” in the wood. So, the first screwdriver may have been simply a modified drill bit. Maybe my essay should be about the brace and the screwdriver?

  An obvious place to look for French technology is Diderot and d’Alembert’s great Encyclopédie. My university’s library again comes through with a complete set, all seventeen volumes, as well as eleven volumes of plates and the seven supplementary volumes. The librarian unlocks the glass case in the Rare Book Room and I heft the heavy folio over to a reading table. I open the old book carefully. The paper feels coarse. The authors of the Encyclopédie provide no fewer than three entries under Tourne-vis. First a general description, ending with the observation that “the screwdriver is a very useful tool.”9 Then a brief mention of the arquebusier’s screwdriver, u
sed by soldiers to adjust matchlock guns. Last, a long paragraph on the cabinetmaker’s screwdriver. The description of the latter is characteristically thorough: the steel of the blade must be tempered for strength; the tip is to be sharp so that it won’t slip out of the slot in the head of the screw; a metal ferrule, or band, is required to reinforce the base of the wooden handle; and the handle itself must be slightly flattened so that it can be firmly held while screwing. The text closes with a reference to an illustration. Excitedly I find the correct volume and turn to a chapter devoted to tools used by cabinetmakers and workers in marquetry. There it is at the bottom of the page. An engraving of a short-bladed tool with a flat, oval wooden handle, just as described in the text. The folio was published in 1765, fourteen years before the Virginia will, which makes it the oldest evidence of a screwdriver that I have come across so far. I’m not sure what I expected, but I’m disappointed that the tool resembles an ordinary modern screwdriver. Can this really be the first screwdriver?

  Tourne-vis from Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, 1765.

  Next to the engraving of the screwdriver in the Encyclopédie is an illustration of a curious tool that consists of a screw attached to a ring. It is identified as a tire-fond, which the authors explain is used by inlay workers and cabinetmakers to pull pieces of wood into place. On the same page is a description of a tire-bouchon (literally, cork-puller): “a kind of screw of iron or steel that is attached to a ring.” For centuries, wine bottles were sealed with wooden bungs. In the mid-1600s, it was discovered that the elastic outer bark of the cork oak, which grows predominantly in Spain and Portugal, made a more effective stopper. However, the new, tight-fitting “corks” were difficult to draw. Someone—perhaps a thirsty cabinetmaker—found that the tire-fond made a convenient corkscrew. My old Dictionnaire Général de la Langue Française records the first use of tire-bouchon in 1718, two years before corkscrew appeared in English. For a moment I toy with nominating the corkscrew as the best tool of the millennium—certainly the most agreeable—but decide to continue my search.

  My Dictionnaire states that the word tournevis was officially accepted by the Académie Française in 1740 and first appeared in print as early as 1723, which anticipates the first English-language reference by more than fifty years.10 That makes sense. I had read that Moxon copied many of his illustrations from earlier French publications. It is beginning to look as if the screwdriver might be a French invention.

  The first screwdrivers were probably handmade by local blacksmiths. Yet, as the engraving in the Encyclopédie made clear, there was nothing primitive about these early tools. Not that the screwdriver is complicated—there are many traditional tools from which it could easily have been derived. For example, the Encyclopédie mentions that the tournevis was often confused with the tourne à gauche, a wood-handled steel spike that was used as a key to turn other tools. Awls, files, and chisels could also have provided models for the screwdriver. Or the earliest screwdriver may simply have been a modification of a broken or disused implement. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation owns two such screwdrivers: one is made from the broken blade of a colchimarde, or small sword; the other is adapted from an old file, with a stubby wooden handle mounted transversely, like an auger handle.11 According to Henry C. Mercer, who in 1929 wrote the first history of American tools, auger-handled screwdrivers were commonly used in the eighteenth century to release the heavy iron screw bolts that connected rails to bedposts.

  I often consult Mercer’s Ancient Carpenters’ Tools. Together with Goodman’s History of Woodworking Tools it is one of the basic texts on the history of hand tools. Mercer’s book includes several photographs of nineteenth-century screwdrivers from his extensive collection of early American tools and artifacts. Unfortunately, he has nothing new to say about the origin of the screwdriver. He has never heard of ancient Roman screwdrivers or seen medieval pictures of screwdrivers. He, too, writes that screwdrivers were not commonly used by carpenters before the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Mercer conjectures that screwdrivers must have been used before 1700, and he speculates that Moxon may simply have overlooked the tool. I find myself agreeing with Mercer: if there were screws, there must have been screwdrivers.

  Henry Chapman Mercer is an interesting figure. He was born in 1856 in Doylestown, the seat of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He attended Harvard, where he studied art history under Charles Eliot Norton, then went on to law school. He was admitted to the bar, but thanks to a small inheritance, he was able to spend the next decade in leisurely European travel. His chief legacy of this idle period was an appreciation for the arts, an interest in antiquity, and a case of venereal disease that would prevent him from marrying. After his return to the United States, he worked as a curator of American archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania museum. At this time he appears to be an unremarkable type: the gentlemanly amateur. Photographs show a dapper young man with curly mustaches. “A good fellow: a member of the Rittenhouse Club: a collector and traveler: a man of means,” is how one acquaintance described him.12 Then Mercer showed an independent streak. He developed an original theory of archaeology, reasoning that the past could best be understood not by examining prehistory but by working back from the present. He left the university, returned to Doylestown, and began collecting early American tools.

  Mercer’s interest in old crafts led him to traditional ceramics. He visited England and met a tile maker who had worked for William Morris, and on his return he established an art pottery that he called the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works. Mercer fell under the spell of the British Arts and Crafts movement. Many craft-based enterprises in furniture, metalwork, and weaving, as well as ceramics, were founded in America at this time, a reaction to the shoddy products of mass production and industrialization. Like Morris, whose handicraft business flourished, Mercer achieved not only artistic but also financial success. So-called Mercer tiles became famous and were used in prominent buildings throughout Philadelphia and the Northeast. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s palatial Boston home, Fenway Court (now the Gardner Museum), owes much of its charm to a profusion of Mercer tiles.

  In 1907, enriched by a second inheritance, Mercer built a home for himself. Fonthill was traditional in conception, but it was not built of traditional materials. Encouraged by his brother William, a sculptor who had been experimenting with cement, Mercer chose reinforced concrete as his primary building material. Frank Lloyd Wright would complete Unity Temple in Oak Park out of concrete the following year, but Mercer, who designed his house himself, used the new material differently—in a free-flowing and sculptural manner that recalls the Barcelona architect Antonio Gaudí. When Mercer, who personally oversaw the construction, completed his mansion—it took him four years—he followed it with a pottery works adjacent to the house, then turned his hand to building a museum to house his vast collection of tools and artifacts.

  Doylestown is not far from where I live, and I decide to visit the Mercer Museum. It stands in the center of town. The building is a seven-story pile of gray concrete surmounted by clay-tiled towers, gables, and parapets. It resembles a baronial castle transplanted from the Transylvanian Alps. The unusual interior is dominated by a tall room rising to the roof and surrounded on all sides by stairs and galleries. This central space is crammed with an astonishing array of objects: high-back chairs suspended from the ceiling; rakes, hoes, and wagon wheels fixed to the walls; a wooden sleigh that floats through the air and almost crashes into a New Bedford whaleboat. The main floor contains carriages, wagons, and a cigar-store Indian standing next to a large apple press.

  The guidebook informs me that there are fifty thousand objects in the museum. I had hoped to find a case with screwdrivers, but Mercer did not organize his collection according to simple categories. Instead, he created a series of small alcoves, each resembling a workshop dedicated to a different craft or occupation. I peer through the small-paned shop windows; the mullions, like everything else, are concrete. In th
e wheelwright’s workshop I recognize a huge adze for routing axle holes; elsewhere, I glimpse a massive Commander maul. The watchmaker’s shop contains several interesting miniature lathes powered by the same sort of bows that the Egyptians used to turn drills. In the woodworker’s shop I see an assortment of wooden carpenter’s braces as well as a giant five-foot-long plane for finishing floor planks. The room contains so many tools that the effect is dizzying—a vast nineteenth-century garage sale. Eventually, in the gunsmith’s shop, I find a screwdriver. Like almost everything else, it is unlabeled.

  It is December and I am the only visitor in the cavernous, cold building. Before leaving I drop into the museum library, run by the Bucks County Historical Society, to which Mercer presented the museum after its completion. Several people are working at long tables. It is the only part of the building that is heated; I will at least get warm and perhaps come across something useful. The card index has only two entries for screwdrivers, both books that I have read. There are several copies of Mercer’s own book, as well as reprints of Moxon and other standard texts familiar to me.

  A page from the tool catalog of William Marples & Sons, Sheffield, 1870.

  Browsing through the stacks, I come across a book on nineteenth-century English tool manufacturers in Sheffield. This privately published book—its typed pages bound in a heavy leather cover—is relatively recent, but it is unlikely I would have found it elsewhere; it is one of only 750 copies printed.13 Inside are reproductions of pages from English tool manufacturers’ catalogs. Sheffield, then the center of the British steel industry, produced probably the finest tools in the world. According to the author, Kenneth Roberts, the oldest surviving example of a Sheffield price list is dated 1828. There, among spokeshaves and squares, I find not one but a whole family of screwdrivers: three inches to fourteen inches long, in black or bright finishes, and in two patterns, Scotch (flat, tapered blades) and London (more elaborate, waisted blades). The prices vary from four shillings and sixpence to twenty-two shillings a dozen; evidently the list was for job-lot buyers. Later catalogs include illustrations of screwdrivers with flat, oval handles, just like the engraving in the Encyclopédie. What surprises me, however, is the terminology: sewing machine turnscrew, cabinet turnscrew, and a small pocket model, the Gent’s Fancy Turnscrew. There is even a turnscrew bit, for driving screws with a carpenter’s brace. There is no doubt about it. Salaman was right. Despite its absence from my dictionaries, turnscrew is a real word, perhaps an older word than screwdriver.