No deal was struck, and the Canadian lost an important part of his business. Meanwhile, other engineers worked on their own types of screw heads. According to Rybczynski, the one that stuck came from inventor John P.
Thompson and businessman Henry F. A Phillips screw offers many of the benefits of a Robertson and can be driven by a traditional slotted screwdriver in a pinch. Phillips licensed his design to the giant American Screw Company, which got General Motors to use the screw in the Cadillac.
Within the decade, almost all automakers were using Phillips screws. A Phillips is, arguably, not a better screw than a Robertson. Today the Phillips is the standard, except in Canada, where the Robertson remains popular, and in Japan, which has its own cruciform screw, the Japanese Industrial Standard. Join Now. The Phillips-head screw and Phillips screwdriver were designed for power tools, especially power tools on assembly lines.
The shallow, cruciform slot in the screw allows the tapering cruciform shape of the screwdriver to seat itself automatically when contact and rotation are achieved. That saves a second or two, and if you've got hundreds of screws in thousands of units say, cars , you're talking big time here. And not only does a power Phillips driver get engaged fast, it stays engaged and doesn't tend to slide out of the screw.
Another advantage: It's hard to overscrew with a power tool. The screwdriver will likely just pop out when the screw is completely fastened. It turns out that Peter L. Robertson had patented a self-seating, square-socket screw in Canada in Some Canadian factories adopted it, but Robertson was vexed by the onslaught of World War I and his own insistence on maintaining tight control of the technology.
Phillips applied for his own patents in and ' After years of rejection, he got the American Screw Co. With that, he patted me affectionately on the head and scooted me off into the world, confident that a handful of tools and a good command of the English language were all I needed to survive my first foray into adulthood. When something broke in the apartment, I would pull out the pink box, fumble past the wrenches, and grab the fat-handled drivers. They were hefty and reassuring, like my Pops.
As an added bonus, they were particularly well-suited to the clumsy, imprecise young woman into which I was blooming. The flathead was as blessedly imprecise as I was. Screws tumbled from its grip or slipped from their slot. I nearly maimed myself a few times. But what the flathead lacked in elegance, it made up for in resolve.
With enough effort, angling, and brute force, many screws slotted or not will submit themselves to rotation by a flathead driver. The screw always comes out worse for the wear. The flathead, on the other hand, remains stolid and unyielding as a Dickensian clergyman. The flathead is unapologetically utilitarian. Whatever, Wikipedia. A quarter-millennia or so ago, though, the flathead was called the screw-turner Schraubendreher in German or the turn-screw tournevis in French.
Witold Rybczynski, author of One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw , even found an illustration from of a short-bladed, slot-head screwdriver—not too different from the one Pops sent me off to college with.
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