Walter Chrysler's tools, he made them himself in his younger days in the 1890s when he was an apprentice in the Union Pacific roundhouse in Ellis, Illinois.

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Walter Chrysler made those tools himself in the 1890s when he was an apprentice in the Union Pacific roundhouse in Ellis, Illinois.

The following is from "Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius"  by Vincent Curcio:

Another thing that set Walt apart from other boys was the quality of the things be made.  The most Important were his tools.  In those days a workman was expected to furnish his own, and the "unfailing sign of a skilled workman was the chest of tools he brought to any job.  With good reason, he prized them above anything he owned.  A good workman was likely to mistrust any tool whose metal had not been tempered by himself."  Walt made his own for that reason, and another: He couldn't afford to buy any.

First he made a little pair of calipers that could measure a four-Inch diameter, then other tools as he needed them.  One day be was amazed by a catalog picture of a depth gauge, which he had never seen before.  Around the shop they used a wire, fingernail, and ruler homemade system that, with luck, might be accurate to one-sixteenth of an inch.  With the catalog picture as a model, he made his own depth gauge accurate to one-thirty-second of an inch, and after this he could make a plug for a hole in a piece of metal that was right the first time, eliminating the need for chipping and filing, and thus saving time.  This was the sort of incremental step toward standardization of machines and labor that would stick with him for the rest of his life and be of vast Importance in his future work as an automobile production man.  Finally, after be had made a pair of granddaddy calipers with legs almost as long as his arms, he got up the nerve to ask to be allowed to work on the first lathe, where the locomotive piston rods were turned,  and succeeded there, as he had at every other task.  An old carpenter in the shop with a practiced eye had watched Walt make his tools, and in a workman's gesture of admiration made him a box to keep them safe from the nightshift men who had a habit of permanently "borrowing" any that they found lying around.  By the time it was finished, Walt had marked all his tools with the Initials "W. P. C." etched in acid, as he had learned from an article in Scientific American.  Today that box of tools stands in a display case on a platform in the two billion-dollar Chrysler Technology Center in Auburn Hills, Michigan.