Henry Phillips was a Portland, Oregon, businessman with a penchant for gadgets.

Realizing that carmakers needed a screw that could be driven with more torque and that would hold tighter than slotted screws, he developed a recessed cross screw that could be used easily with an automated screwdriver.

The screw establishment was unimpressed. "The manufacture and marketing of these articles don't promise sufficient commercial success to warrant interesting ourselves further," wrote a representative of the American Screw Company.

Phillips was undaunted, and when World War II broke out, industrialists needed to turn out large quantities of jeeps and other machines very quickly. The philips screw, and of course the phillips screwdriver, caught on.

Interestingly, the Phillips Screw Company never manufactured a single screw or screwdriver. It simply licensed the rights to manufacture the products.

By 1919, the Phillips screwdriver had become so ubiquitous that Phillips was stripped of the patent. He died in 1988 at age 68.