40 Fun Facts About Hardware Stores

The spray lubricant WD-40 was perfected on its 40th formula, so what do the letters WD stand for?

Water Displacement was the goal: the spray was first made in 1953 to protect the outer skin of the Atlas missile from corrosion. The formula was never patented, to keep its ingredients secret.

Which tool sold in hardware stores began in the 1780s as a hand-worked surgical aid for difficult childbirth?

Chainsaw ancestors were fine serrated chains pulled between two wooden handles by Scottish doctors. A German bone-cutting version, cranked by a handle, followed around 1830.

Which hardware store essential was created in World War II to keep moisture out of ammunition boxes?

Duct tape reached the army after ordnance worker Vesta Stoudt wrote to President Roosevelt in 1943 with her idea for a cloth tape. It was designed to be ripped by hand, not cut with scissors.

Which adhesive was found in 1942 by a team seeking clear plastic for gun sights, then rejected as too sticky?

Super glue stuck to everything it touched, so Harry Coover's team set it aside. He rediscovered the formula in 1951 while working at Eastman Kodak, and a patent followed.

Which actor's Oscar for The Philadelphia Story went on display in his father's small-town hardware store?

James Stewart grew up in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where his father hoped he would take over the shop after Princeton. The statuette sat there beside family awards and military medals.

Which Halloween yard decoration did The Home Depot release in 2020 in a version standing 12 feet tall?

Skeleton fans nicknamed the giant Skelly. Its designers thought 10 feet was not grand enough, so they stretched it to 12.

Which grill brand grew from a kettle George Stephen built in 1951 from two half-spheres meant for buoys?

Weber Brothers was the Chicago sheet metal shop where Stephen worked. He sold his invention as George's Barbecue Kettle and later bought the factory outright.

Ace Hardware, formed in Chicago in 1924, was named in honor of which group of First World War heroes?

Fighter pilots, the flying aces who beat the odds, inspired the founders. When the longtime president retired in 1973, the business was sold to its own retailers.

A carpenter's spirit level traditionally holds its bubble in which liquid, the reason behind the tool's name?

Alcohol, once called spirit, was preferred because it will not freeze and lets the bubble glide with less friction, which keeps the reading accurate.

Which garden machine did Edwin Budding invent in 1830 after watching a bladed cylinder trim cloth in a mill?

Lawn mower design borrowed the mill's cutting reel, which trimmed the nap of woolen cloth. Two of the earliest machines went to London's zoological gardens and the Oxford colleges.

Staff at The Home Depot wear aprons in which bright color, also used on the retailer's signs and equipment?

Orange is the company color across the business. Homer, the cartoon mascot, first appeared in the retailer's advertising in 1981.

Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank started The Home Depot after being fired in 1978 by which rival chain?

Handy Dan pushed both men out during a corporate power struggle, although Marcus had been its chief executive. Their first two stores opened the following year.

Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank bought which NFL team in 2002 from the son of the club's founder?

Atlanta Falcons ownership passed to Blank in February 2002. He later launched a Major League Soccer club that shares the same stadium.

Lowe's began in 1921 as a single hardware store opened by Lucius Smith Lowe in which state?

North Carolina's small town of North Wilkesboro was home to the first shop, and the firm later traded for years as Lowe's North Wilkesboro Hardware.

Lowe's was the main sponsor of the number 48 Chevrolet driven by which seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion?

Jimmie Johnson carried the retailer's colors for Hendrick Motorsports until 2018, the last year he drove for Lowe's.

Which Super Bowl-winning coach and broadcaster starred in Ace Hardware commercials from 1987 to 2010?

John Madden followed two actresses into the role. Connie Stevens fronted the chain's television ads in the 1970s, then Suzanne Somers until 1982.

Menards, the Midwestern chain founded as Menard Cashway Lumber, has its headquarters in Eau Claire in which state?

Wisconsin is where its founder went to college. After graduating in Eau Claire in 1962, he bought land in the city and built his first office and shop.

Which discount tool chain began in 1977 as a California mail-order business selling returned merchandise?

Harbor Freight was started by Eric Smidt and his father. Its first walk-in shop opened in Kentucky in 1982 to sell goods sent back by mail-order buyers.

Which Australian hardware chain is known for the fundraising sausage sizzles held outside its stores?

Bunnings lets community groups run the weekend barbecues for their causes. The business dates from 1886, when two brothers emigrated from England to Western Australia.

DIY chain B&Q, named after founders Richard Block and David Quayle, opened in 1969 in which English port city?

Southampton's suburb of Portswood housed the first shop, set up in a former furniture warehouse. Delivery notes were already shortening Block & Quayle to initials.

Which UK DIY chain did Australian group Wesfarmers sell for just one pound in 2018, two years after buying it?

Homebase went to a restructuring firm for £1 after a botched attempt to convert its stores to a new format. Supermarket Sainsbury's had co-founded the chain in 1981.

Building supplies chain 84 Lumber, founded by Joseph Hardy near Pittsburgh, takes the number 84 from what?

Its hometown's name is the source: the business grew up in the rural village of Eighty Four, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh.

In England, which traditional job title describes a shopkeeper selling hardware such as nails, tools and locks?

Ironmonger first covered both the making of iron goods and the shops that sold them for home use. The term has largely faded from everyday speech.

Which tool line did Lowe's launch in 1998 as a house brand to rival the tool labels of other retailers?

Kobalt covers hand tools, power tools and tool storage. Lowe's later added a cheaper line positioned below it, Blue Hawk, introduced in 2009.

Which brand of hand tools did Sears register as a trademark in 1927 and sell through its catalog and stores?

Craftsman tools were never made by Sears itself but by other firms under contract. The retailer sold the brand to a toolmaker in 2017.

Which paint brand, sold exclusively at The Home Depot, began in 1947 from the back of a station wagon?

Behr began when Otho Behr Jr. sold linseed oil wood stains to paint stores from his car. By 1988 it offered computer color matching from fabric samples.

On the sitcom Home Improvement, which fictional tool company sponsors Tim Taylor's show-within-a-show, Tool Time?

Binford backs Tool Time, which the writers conceived as a parody of the PBS renovation program This Old House.

Which original host of This Old House signed with Sears in 1990 to pitch the retailer's line of tools?

Bob Vila hosted the program from 1979 to 1989. He got the job after winning an award for restoring a Victorian house in Massachusetts.

Which square-socket screw sped up Model T production before Henry Ford was refused a license for the design?

Robertson screws became commonplace in Canada, where P. L. Robertson patented the design in 1907 and Ford went on using them at his local division.

The hex key is best known by which name, trademarked around 1910 by a manufacturer in Hartford, Connecticut?

Allen keys are named after the Allen Manufacturing Company, which advertised its safety set screws from 1910 and patented a way of cold-forming screw heads around a hexagonal die.

Masking tape was created in 1925 by Richard Drew, an employee of which company, to help frustrated car painters?

3M was where Drew worked when he saw autobody workers struggle to remove butcher paper they had taped to cars. He realized they needed a tape with a gentler adhesive.

Which brand of locking pliers was invented in 1924 by William Petersen in the village of De Witt, Nebraska?

Vise-Grip became close to a generic term for the tool in the United States, while similar pliers are also sold as Mole grips.

Which Connecticut city, where Frederick Stanley began making door bolts in 1843, is nicknamed the Hardware City?

New Britain was once known as the Hardware Capital of the World. Two Stanley family firms there, one making bolts and one making rules and levels, merged in 1920.

Which Maryland toolmaker patented the hand-held electric drill with a pistol-style handle and trigger switch in 1917?

Black & Decker began in 1910 as a small Baltimore machine shop run by Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker. Its first factory opened in Towson the year the drill was patented.

Sawzall, a trade name Milwaukee Tool introduced in 1951, is now a common nickname for which type of power tool?

Reciprocating saw blades cut with a push-and-pull motion. The tool is used in construction and demolition work, and even for pruning larger trees.

American nail sizes are written in pennies, as in a ten-penny nail, using which letter borrowed from a Roman coin?

The letter d stands for denarius, a Roman coin similar to a penny. The UK used the same abbreviation for its own penny before decimalization.

Which lock brand is named after the American inventor who patented a small flat key with serrated edges in 1861?

Yale locks build on the pin tumbler design of Linus Yale Sr., refined by his son with pins of varying lengths. The same basic design is still in use today.

The word plumbing comes from the Latin for which metal, which the Romans shaped into their pipes?

Lead, plumbum in Latin, suited pipe making because it is easy to work into shape. Its use for drinking supplies fell sharply after World War II over poisoning fears.

Galvanized steel buckets, nails and fence wire are protected from corrosion by a thin coating of which metal?

Zinc is more reactive than the steel beneath, so the coating corrodes first and goes on protecting the metal even where there are gaps in it.

In which 2014 thriller does Denzel Washington play a hardware store worker who fights gangsters with its tools?

The Equalizer builds to retired intelligence officer Robert McCall using a nail gun and other improvised weapons inside the Boston store where he works.