Drill - History

History

The earliest drills existed some thirty-five thousand years ago. The drills consisted of little more than a pointed rock which would be spun between the hands. The next major development was the bow drill, which dates back to the ancient Harappans and Egyptians. The drill press as a machine tool evolved from the bow drill and is many centuries old. It was powered by various power sources over the centuries, such as human effort, water wheels, and windmills, often with the use of belts. Churn drills date back to as early as Qin Dynasty China. Churn drills in ancient China were built of wood and labor intensive, but were able to go through solid rock. With the coming of the electric motor in the late 19th century, there was a great rush to power machine tools with such motors, and drills were among them. The invention of the first electric drill is credited to Arthur James Arnot and William Blanch Brain, in 1889, at Melbourne, Australia. Wilhelm Fein invented the portable electric drill in 1895, at Stuttgart, Germany. In 1917, Black & Decker patented a trigger-like switch mounted on a pistol-grip handle.