Re: Warning!

On Mon, 09 Oct 2000 21:49:15 +1300, David Shorter <daz...@ihug.co.nz> Spake thus:

>Peter Punk wrote:
>
>> I think that the Phillips screwdriver was invented by someone called Phillips,
>> not by the electronics company called Phillips (Dutch firm, best known iventions
>> are the audio tape cassette and the compact disk, known in the US as Magnavox).
>
>and spelt Philips.

Just interesting that I was sent this today.

                 http://www.uselessknowledge.com/ll/phillips.shtml

                 Henry Phillips was a Portland, Oregon, businessman with a
                 penchant for gadgets.

                 Realizing that carmakers needed a screw that could be driven
                 with more torque and that would hold tighter than slotted
                 screws, he developed a recessed cross screw that could be
                 used easily with an automated screwdriver.

                 The screw establishment was unimpressed. "The manufacture
                 and marketing of these articles don't promise sufficient
                 commercial success to warrant interesting ourselves further,"
                 wrote a representative of the American Screw Company.

                 Phillips was undaunted, and when World Ware II broke out,
                 industrialists needed to turn out large quantities of jeeps and
                 other machines very quickly. The philips screw, and of course
                 the phillips screwdriver, caught on.

                 Interestingly, the Phillips Screw Company never manufactured
                 a single screw or screwdriver. It simply licensed the rights to
                 manufacture the products.

                 By 1919, the Phillips screwdriver had become so ubiquitous
                 that Phillips was stripped of the patent. He died in 1988 at age
                 68.

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