We don’t usually notice the fairly mundane objects around us that are absolutely essential — to the point that hardly anything would function without them — but seem to be just “available” and ubiquitous. Like nuts and bolts. They’re not branded (okay, some are), and although there are some variations, it’s very easy to find bolts and nuts that have the same screw threads so they just fit together. This didn’t happen by accident, though, and the ordinary nuts and bolts available by the ton today were once patented inventions.
“Once” in this case was 1864. A member of the “Franklin Institute,” a science education institution in Philadelphia in the US, proposed a design for screw threads that would be easier to make than the ones in common use at the time. In those days, if you were a mechanic who needed a screw, you usually had to make it yourself. But anyway, the person we’re talking about is William Sellers, who was born September 19, 1824 in a small town in Pennsylvania.
The Sellers family was full of inventors; in particular his cousin George Sellers patented things from hill-climbing trains to steamboats, and another cousin worked on the first hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls. William opened his own machine tool shop, William Sellers & Co., which in its day was widely known.
Sellers came to his machine tool expertise thanks to his uncle, who also ran a machine shop. Sellers apprenticed with him at 14, and stayed until he opened his own shop (with his brother-in-law) when he was in his 20s. He kept inventing basically all the time, and wound up with over 90 patents — but the most important one is the one we don’t even notice. His standard screw thread system was not the first, but it was the easiest to adopt because of its easy-to-machine design. He won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1867, five gold medals at the Vienna Exposition of 1873, and was awarded the Legion of Honor at the Paris Exposition of 1889. In his home country he didn’t get any special awards, but if you check a package of nuts or bolts, look on the label or “US Standard,” “Sellers Standard” or “Franklin Institute System.” They’re all names for the standard Sellers invented.
