how did Cadiilac get the advantage on the competition? One way was the Phillips screw and screwdriver

The importance of the crosshead screw design lies in its self-centering property, useful on automated production lines that use powered screwdrivers. 

Thompson  wasn't trying to make life with hand tools easier. He was trying to solve an industrial problem. To drive a slot screw, you need hand-eye coordination to line up the screwdriver and the slot. If you're a machine – especially a 1930s machine – you ain't got no eye, and your hand coordination may depend on humans.

And not only does a power Phillips driver get engaged fast, it stays engaged and doesn't tend to slide out of the screw. Another advantage: It's hard to overscrew with a power tool. The screwdriver will likely just pop out when the screw is completely fastened.


The credited inventor of the Phillips screw was John P. Thompson who, in 1932, patented (#1,908,080) a recessed cruciform screw and in 1933, a screwdriver for it

Little information remains about Thompson.

Born in Wagner, Iowa, in 1857, he moved to Portland in 1920 or 1921 from Bismarck, North Dakota. His occupations are listed in Polk's Portland Directory as “furnished rooms” and “laborer,” although census records indicate that he had worked as a bank cashier and in real estate before moving to Oregon.

 A Sunday Oregonian article from 1939 stated that Thompson, who died in Portland on September 4, 1940, had been an auto mechanic when he invented the screw.



The Phillips cross-head screw was originally the brainchild of John P. Thompson of Oregon. The X-shape of the slot and pointed tip of the Phillips head screwdriver made the driver self-centering and unlikely to slip out when it wasn’t supposed to.

The recessed slot was shallow enough, though, that the driver did pop out when the screw was fully tightened, which prevented over-torquing and damage to the screw, the driver and the product being assembled. As such, it had great potential for the air-driven fastening tools then being introduced into automotive assembly lines.

 Thompson took out a U.S. patent in 1933 and over the next six months Thompson approached many screw manufacturers, all of which said his screw was impossible to reproduce because the punch needed to create the recess would destroy the screw head.

Thompson decided the whole idea was not manufacturable until he revealed his idea to a Portland acquaintance named Henry Frank Phillips who became intrigued with the idea and offered to buy the rights to the patent.

 In 1934, he approached the American Screw Company of Providence, Rhode Island, the oldest (founded 1837) and largest screw manufacturer in North America where a new president named Eugene Clark had taken over. Clark was captivated by the design despite his engineers' reservations. By 1936, after some significant modifications by Henry Phillips (U.S. Patent #2,046,343, U.S. Patents #2,046,837 to 2,046,840) American Screw agreed to underwrite the development of a cold form process to produce cruciform screws. Eugene Clark said, “I finally told my head men that I would put on pension all who insisted it could not be done.”

Phillips formed the Phillips Screw Company in 1934. After refining the design for the American Screw Company of Providence, Rhode Island, Phillips succeeded in bringing the design to industrial manufacturing and promoting its rapid adoption as a machine screw standard.

 One of the first customers was General Motors who used the innovative design in 1936 for its Cadillac assembly-lines.

http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-phillips-screw.html

https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/phillips_screw_and_driver/#.XoxXq4hKiUk

https://www.wired.com/2011/07/0707phillips-screw-patent/