He is widely regarded as one of the most influential boxers in history. According to filmmaker Ken Burns, "for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious black boxer on Earth". Johnson defeated Jeffries, who was white, triggering dozens of race riots across the U.S. Jeffries was dubbed the "fight of the century". Furthermore, the tool was not named "monkey wrench" in an attempt to demean its inventor, as the term "monkey wrench" had been in use since at least the 1840s and most likely referred to the tool's original "twist the tail" method of adjusting the jaws.John Arthur Johnson (Ma– June 10, 1946), nicknamed the " Galveston Giant", was an American boxer who, at the height of the Jim Crow era, became the first black world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915). In summation, while boxer Jack Johnson did patent a type of wrench in the 1920s, it was not the original monkey wrench. Johnson Sheffield" with an "S.J." in a flag logo and exhibits the very fine detailed workmanship characteristic of early Sheffield tools. I conclude that the name came along with these early wrenches when they were shipped to America. This item, with its rounded head and "twist the tail" (handle) to adjust the mouth feature, could easily inspire the image of a monkey. Also, I show a very early English wrench from my collection that I reckon to be from about the same or an even earlier era. I now provide some further evidence to back up Coes and Trask's allegation, in that a wrench labeled "Monkey Wrench" was depicted in the English tool catalogue issued by Timmins & Sons, which hails from the early to mid-1840s. They indicated that the term "monkey wrench" was already in use prior to Coes' early patent (1841) and referred at that time to the earlier English type of adjustable wrench where you turned the handle to adjust the jaws. New England industrial pioneers, Loring Coes and Laurin Trask, around the end of the 19th century related the more plausible account. However, this has been refuted by diligent historical and patent research. Of course, over the years, some speculation indicated that the original inventor, a man named Monk or Monck was responsible for the name. Herb Page, for example, wrote in a 2002 article entitled "Reach for the Wrench" in the Fine Tool Journal that Moncky was neither responsible for the tool's invention nor its name, and that the latter stemmed from the wrench's appearance: He owes his fame and infamy to his boxing exploits and his violation of social norms.ĪLthough the Jim Crow Museum stated that the monkey wrench was named after its inventor, Charles Moncky, not all historians agree. Jack Johnson, the inventor, represents little more than an interesting historical footnote. Stillson, a steamboat firefighter, received a patented on Septemfor an invention later known as the Stillson pipe wrench. On September 9, 1913, Robert Owen Jr, of Shawnee, Ohio, received a patent for the "Double Acting Wrench" (ratchet wrench), arguably the most important advancement in wrench technology. Moncky's wrench was named using a purposeful misspelling of his name. Charles Moncky, a Baltimore mechanic, invented the monkey wrench around 1858. Solymon Merrick of Springfield, Massachusetts, patented the first wrench in 1835. His patent was not the first for a wrench. Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, patented a wrench (U.S. In February 2005, the Jim Crow Museum published a brief history of the wrench in an attempt to answer a question about Jack Johnson and his 1922 patent: Johnson's patent, however, did not mark the invention of the first adjustable wrench, nor did it spawn the origin of the term "monkey wrench." Johnson's patent was merely an improvement on a previous design and had little bearing on the history of the tool, which can be traced back to the 1840s. Jack Johnson was the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion, and he did patent a type of wrench in 1922. While the central theme of this meme (that white people used the term "monkey wrench" as a racial slur to demean its inventor) is false, the meme does have some truth to it. In mid-December 2015 a meme that claimed the term "monkey wrench" was first used as a derogatory term concerning its African-American inventor Jack Johnson, started circulating online: Jack Johnson did not invent what we now call a "monkey wrench," nor did that term originate as a racial slur.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |