Builders of the Liberty cargo ships found them so useful and the time pressures to finish ships so great that welders simply welded the Vise-Grips into the hulls rather than removing them from the pieces they were holding together.
Thousands more were shipped to England for their aircraft industry. Defense industries used thousands of Vise-Grips. One of them sold the government on the advantages of the Vise-Grip.īy 1941, the little plant was operating at capacity to fulfill government contracts.
When the war started, Bill Petersen was still working on refining the product, two of his sons, Chris and Ralph, handled manufacturing, and another son, Richard, was struggling to put together a network of sales agents. In 1934, the Petersen Manufacturing Company was formed, but it wasn't until 1938 that they opened their first official manufacturing plant in a defunct drug store in "downtown" Dewitt. In spite of hard times, the tool was popular. Gradually, he built a business, but the Depression slowed its growth. He built an inventory and starting selling the Vise-Grip Pliers out of the trunk of his car to farmers and mechanics in the surrounding towns. The patent for the locking lever was issued in 1924. He got his first patent for a primitive version in 1921. Finally, he hammered one out of metal on his forge. He built several prototypes, first out of cardboard and then wood. Later, he figured out a way for the other handle to lock it in place. He figured out that a screw mechanism in the handle could adjust the opening of the pliers. Somehow, he came up with the idea of combining the function of the two tools. But the pliers couldn't be locked and the vise was hard to set up. In the early 1920s, he arrived in Nebraska and opened a blacksmith shop.Īt some point, he realized his job would be a lot easier if he had a set of pliers that would clamp down and hold the piece of metal he was working on "in a vise-like grip." He undoubtedly had sets of pliers and at least one vise in his shop. At one time, he even tried to build and sell early motorcars. He tried his hand at farming, but he was in incurable inventor.
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