Browsing around the interweb & found some of this. One thing lead to
another...

Interesting how old some of these power tools are & how many brand names
are still about.


Electric Drill
1895 the first hand held portable electric drill was developed by the
German brothers Wilhelm & Carl Fein in Stuttgart.

By 1917, Black & Decker had patented a trigger-like switch, which was
mounted on a pistol-grip handle to turn the portable electric drill on &
off.

Circular Saw
The worm-drive portable circular saw was invented in 1923 by Edmond
Michel. In 1924 Michel formed a partnership with Joseph Sullivan, and
together they started the Michel Electric Handsaw Company, with the sole
purpose of manufacturing and marketing the saw invented by Michel. The
company later renamed itself Skilsaw Inc., which today is a subsidiary
of Robert Bosch GmbH.

Jigsaw
In 1947, Scintilla started producing jigsaws under name "Lesto jigsaw".
In 1954 Scintilla was acquired by Bosch and in 1964 the name "Lesto" was
replaced with Bosch. In 1966 Bosch added the pendulum action to the
blade movement and in 1989 it added the tool-less blade replacement device.

Cordless Drill
In 1961, Black and Decker invented cordless power tools.

Router
The plunge router, invented by ELU (now part of DeWalt) in Germany in
the late 1940s.

Planer
In 1958, Makita Corporation, which was founded in 1915 as an electric
motor sales and repair company, became the first company in Japan to
manufacture and sell electric planers.

Angle Grinder
In 1922, Hermann Ackermann and Hermann Schmitt started a company in
Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt to produce and sell their new invention: the MS
6 hand-held grinding machine, featuring an electrical motor that drove a
flexible shaft. This feature was the inspiration for this brand-new
tool's name: Flex .

In the late 1920s, the engineers succeed in replacing the flexible shaft
with an angle gear set. This was the world's first angle grinder, also
sold under the brand name Flex. Flex started becoming established as a
new word.




--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk