The Swede who threw a better spanner in the works

There are so many people to thank for so many reasons, all those people who made life easier for the rest of the world population. All those people who took things one step further for the greater good of all, those people who thought “ this can’t be it? There must be more to this tool than this?!”

Well, no more sleepless nights for all you home-handy individuals who have found yourself on many occasions looking down on your personal adjustable wrench and thought “who came up with this clever tool and is it a Swede?”

Let me quench your thirst for answers. Firstly, is it a Swede? But of course it is a Swede. The inventor of the adjustable wrench, unknowingly, is the forefather of the expression ‘less is more’. While Johan Petter Johansson (1853-1943) was working as a fitter, he found himself standing in a sea of wrenches to match a whole range of screws and nuts. The confusion and frustration was evident for JPJ and being the clever sausage he was he combined the whole lot into one single tool, the adjustable nut wrench, or the universal wrench. This little piece of invention was constructed and patented in 1892. Since then, the regular toolbox contents have been more or less halved and many trades’ people’s backs have been saved, chiropractic clinics gone out of business, all due to our nifty JPJ. So inspirational has the adjustable wrench been that some people even write songs about it. Credit given where credit is due.