The History Of Screw

Screws are basic parts widely used in our daily life. Although they are hidden inside the product and not obvious, since screws are called the “salt of the industry”, this shows their importance.

We can often see screws in our daily life. Such as clocks, medical instruments, houses, cars, tunnels, signal lights, buildings, Bridges, trams, ships, planes, rockets, and so on. We can even say that there is no object in sight that does not use screws. About 20,000 screws are used in a car. The importance of screws, which are often called the “salt of the industry” in Japan, can be seen in the fact that they are hidden inside the product.

Salt has been a sacred presence since ancient times and is also regarded as a symbol of life. In addition, the Roman army paid its soldiers salt, so there is a saying that the word “salary” comes from salt. Therefore, the screw is likened to “salt”, enough to prove its high value of existence. This time, we will introduce the representative basic technology of manufacturing – screws.

The history of screws goes back a long, long time. A manuscript from 1475, included in Pollard’s History of Firearms, details and depicts the earliest armadillo with two grooved screws attached to the butt. The reason for the use of screws is to deal with the shock caused by the continuous detonation of gunpowder in the barrel so that the gun will not be loose from the stock.

Early screws were made by hand. During production, the nail embryo of the screw should be forged first, and then the nail head and round nail body should be knocked out on the nail embryo with a hammer; A saw is then used to cut a groove in the head of the nail, and a screw plate called a die is used to create the threads.

Due to the complex and expensive production process, early screws were sold individually and were not widely used. Until the mid-16th century, its use was limited to a limited number of industries, such as armor, muskets and watchmaking.

Although threads date back to 400 BC, the most important developments in the modern bolt and screw technology have been made in the past 150 years, and experts disagree about the origins of the nut and bolt. Frederick E. Graves, in his article “Nuts and Bolts,” argues that the history of threaded bolts and matching nuts as fasteners only dates back to the 15th century. He relied on a book in the early 15th century in which screws were first recorded in printed form.

However, Graves acknowledged that while the history of threaded bolts dates back to the 15th century, unthreaded bolts date back to Roman times. These bolts were used to bar doors, as pivots and wedge bolts for opening and closing doors: the bars or bolts had notches in them to drive wedges into them, preventing the bolts from moving. He also says the Romans made the first screws out of bronze or even silver. The thread is manually filed, or the wire is first wound around the screw and welded to form the thread.

According to bolt expert Bill Eccles, threads go back even further. Archimedes discovered the principle of the spiral and used it to build a device for carrying water. However, there are indications that the screw pump may have been born in Egypt before Archimedes. The device is made of wood and is used to irrigate the land and drain sewage from the bottom of the ship. “But many believe that the thread was invented around 400BC by [Greek philosopher] Alcytus, who is known as the founder of mechanics and belongs to the same era as Plato,” Eccles wrote on his website.

History can be divided into two parts: the invention of the thread around 400 BC, which was used to carry water, press grape juice and make wine. The fasteners themselves are about 400 years old. Well into the 15th century, Gutenberg used screws in the fasteners of his printing press. Then came the trend to use screws more widely, extending their use to things like clocks and armor. According to Graves, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks from the late 15th and early 16th centuries contain designs for thread-cutting machines.

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