One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw (3 page)

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, used 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?

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-
1600
s, 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 the 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.