It's hard to imagine that it's only been a little over 100 years since the first cars rolled off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. As we look around today at the dealerships, used car lots, gas stations, highways and automotive repair shops, it's not easy to imagine a time when the automobile was a novelty. In today's world should your car or break down it might be an expensive inconvenience but you would not have a problem finding a mechanic with the right tools to fix it. It has not always been that way.

In the year 1910 there were only about 450,000 car owners in the United States. A small toolkit may have been included with your car purchase. But unless you were a mechanic yourself finding someone to fix a problem with your car might have been a challenge. And the tools that were available to the mechanic were by and large very simple. Tools were not the main focus, selling automobiles was. Sometimes a different sized ranch was required for nearly every nut and bolt on an automobile. This was an expensive way to assemble a toolkit.

Because of the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit of two young men there is now an active market and interest in antique Snap-on tools. It's a fascinating and interesting story about the development of this company.

"There must be a better way" Joseph Johnson must have been thinking to himself in 1919. He was employed with the American Grinder Manufacturing Co. having risen to the position of the manager of the wrench and tool division, and he was only 25 years old. By this time there were over 8 million cars in the United States. Johnson was not necessarily trained in wrenches and tools, having a background as a cost clerk and expediter. But he was smart and felt like there would be a more efficient way for the mechanics to buy and work with tools. After all, every time they bought a wrench, they were buying another handle.

William Seidemann was a young manager who also worked at American grinder. He and Joe Johnson soon became good friends, and they enjoyed talking about the best way to create a new set of tools for the mechanics. They finally decided that the best way to do it was to have 10 different socket sizes and pair them with five distinct handles. In this way they could offer the mechanics 50 wrenches which were each different.

What happened next must surely make any businessman cringe. Johnson discussed his idea with the management at American Grinder. Management felt like his concept of ten sockets and five handles would actually hurt their individual sales. They turned him down. Johnson had given a American Grinder the opportunity to take his idea and capitalize on it and since they decided it not to do it, Johnson and Seidemann could now move forward on their own.

After working for several weeks, evenings and weekends, Johnson fabricated the first group of five handles. He showed them to Seidemann who said he would help create the sockets to fit the handles. They designed and then fabricated the sockets so they could be "snapped on". Want to guess how the company name was decided on? They also created the first company motto, which was "Five can do the work of 50".

With no money, everything was being done by hand. They were milling the sockets from bar steel, and stamping the stock numbers on also. The last few dollars that they had went into the printing of 2,000 brochures. These would be used to advertise the new snap-on tools.

They only had the one, original, set of hand tools they had just created. They had no manufacturing and no sales force. They did manage to find a traveling tire salesman who covered only the state of Wisconsin. As he would visit each of the shops and he would demonstrate the one set of tools and leave behind a brochure for the mechanic. He collected over 500 COD orders and took these back to Johnson and Seidemann who were hard at work making a second set of tools.

Mechanics clearly saw how the tools would save them time and money, and wanted to add it to their tool chest. This was confirmed when they sent out another salesman with the second set and his results were the same as the first one. Johnson and Seidemann had proven there was a demand for their invention, but at this point they were out of money and had no official business. They also had a huge number of mechanics who wanted their tools, as represented by the COD orders, so they must have known that they had a sure success on their hands.

They contacted an attorney who in turn found some local businessmen willing to invest in the new company. The Snap-On Wrench Company was incorporated on April 10, 1920. Johnson and Seidemann had to borrow $500 each so they could purchase stock in their own business. They rented a 2500 square-foot shop, leased machinery and began production. The tools they created and which sold for only a few dollars back then are now considered to be vintage Snap-on tools and are highly prized as collectibles.