Think about the last time you hung a shelf, mounted a TV, or assembled a bookcase that arrived in forty-two pieces with one cryptic diagram. Somewhere in that struggle you probably gripped a drill handle and pulled a trigger without a second thought. It felt so natural that it was always meant to work this way. It wasn't. According to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the early electric drill that two Baltimore machinists set out to improve was a combination of a motor drill and a manual drill. Operators had to grip side handles with both hands while pressing the tool into a chest plate. Yes, a chest plate. The leap from this awkward setup to the grip in your toolbox drill was made around 1914, and it's a story that includes clever engineering, borrowed inspiration, and a few differing accounts by historians.
Two machinists and a clunky tool
