One could believe that such a simple tool as the screwdriver has been used since the beginning of time. But the screwdriver is a relatively new tool. And it did not become popular before the industrial revolution got underway. Nowadays, the good old screwdriver has trouble competing with electric screwdrivers.

The reason that the screwdriver was not used much in the early days has nothing to do with the screwdriver itself. The technology to produce screwdrivers has been around for a long time. But without screws, a screwdriver is not much of use. And manufacturing high quality screws was not possible until the industrial revolution improved the tools needed for creating screws.

Large wooden screws have been around for a long time. Archimedes’ screw is well known, it may actually be older than Archimedes. In the ancient Rome, large wooden screws were used in wine and olive presses. But for these large wooden screws, no screwdrivers were needed. As mentioned, it was simply not technically possible to produce high quality screws.

The first screws as we know them were developed towards the end of the Middle Ages in Western Europe. But not much is known about the early metal screws. The first known screws seem to have been developed by a German watchmaker in 1513. The early metal screws were time consuming to produce. The threads were done manually by using a file. The design has stayed the same but the manufacturing of screws has improved a lot.

In 1776 the English Wyatt brothers developed a machine that produced wooden screws. In 1797 the Englishman Henry Maudslay invented an improved lathe that made possible to mass produce quality metal screws. During the 19th century, the technical progress made the screws both better and cheaper. Once high-quality screws were produced in large quantities, the screwdriver became a popular tool.

The first references of the screwdriver appear towards the end of the 15th century. The first screwdrivers seems have been made for slotted screws. The screw heads were kept simple for quite some time. The straight slot was used for the majority of screws. The screwdriver had also to compete with screws featuring external-wrenching square and hexagon heads.

A lot of different screw heads were patented but few of them were produced in any larger quantities. The new auto industry needed a better screw and the Philips head screw, invented by Henry Phillips in the early 1930s, provided the solution for the US auto industry.

The first electric screwdriver was developed by Black & Decker in 1923. The first models were corded. Cordless screwdrivers have been around for quite some time but they lacked the power of the corded models. Thanks to improved batteries and lower prices, cordless screwdrivers and drills have become very popular today.