Tool Talk
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: fflintstone on March 10, 2013, 05:43:38 PM
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While cleaning the shop yesterday my son picked up a monkey wrench, and asked me why is it called a monkey wrench? I have no idea. Wikipedia was no real help so does anyone have a clue?
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I've always heard it's named after the inventor.
Not sure.
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FF, Try this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_wrench
Mike
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Wiki's comments are about the state of it. No one really remembers anymore...
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I guess the pet monkey story is just that then, a story?
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There are uncounted stories. There was a town in Connecticut that swore up and down the monkey wrench was invented there, by an appropriately named fellow, apparently oblivous to the fact there were monkey wrenches in England a century before the town was founded....
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Kinda like Columbus discovering America when the land was already occupied.
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There seems to be some question regarding this explanation, but this is what Wikipedia has.
Charles Moncky story
The following story can be found in sundry publications from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:
That handy tool, the "monkey-wrench", is not so named because it is a handy thing to monkey with, or for any kindred reason. "Monkey" is not its name at all, but "Moncky." Charles Moncky, the inventor of it, sold his patent for $2000, and invested the money in a house in Williamsburg, Kings County, where he now lives.[7][8]
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I was thinking with the introduction of steam to boats, then the railroad, it rather drove the need for an adjustable wrench. Doesn't the Coes patent go back to the 1830s? With the industrial revolution, and water wheels, can see the need for a universal tool, but the English had them in the 18th century?
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So basically no one has any more info than Wiki as I stated in my OP?
Also, I never understood why gramps used to call Montgomery wards “monkey wards” (you don’t what to know his term for a VW bug!)
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That handy tool, the "monkey-wrench", is not so named because it is a handy thing to monkey with, or for any kindred reason. "Monkey" is not its name at all, but "Moncky." Charles Moncky, the inventor of it, sold his patent for $2000, and invested the money in a house in Williamsburg, Kings County, where he now lives.[7][8]
Unfortunately for this appealing story, the term is earlier than the purported Moncky patent.
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Branson researched this a while back. Sorry Mike, my memory fades in and out.
http://www.papawswrench.com/vboard/index.php?topic=6433.0 (http://www.papawswrench.com/vboard/index.php?topic=6433.0)
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One far-fetched story is that the wrenches were popular but a bit expensive, so the mechanic that had some told the others in the shop- "Don't monkey with my wrenches!"
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I don't remember if I was reading something, or possibly watching a documentary, about the lives of those working in early factories of the industrial revolution, especially children, and the jobs they had to do. Passing mention was made that some of the more agile boys were enlisted to climb into the overhead maze of line shafting, pulleys, and belts to do assorted lubrication and minor maintenance adjustments. The common slang term for this job was, not surprisingly, "Monkey". I've searched the internet for more proof of that job title but can't find anything now. Maybe someone with interest in the early factories can verify it? Anyhow, It got me thinking that maybe the term "monkey wrench" came about simply because an easily adjustable wrench, that doubles as a hammer, in a size easily handled, was the one tool that these "Monkeys" would invariably find perfect for dealing with square headed set screws on pulleys and the other simple hardware they might encounter. Maybe the name came after the wrench was already well established.
There is another old term--- "throwing a monkey wrench into the gears" or "monkey wrenching" that has come to mean accidental, or intentional, sabotage of the industrial process. I did find this term originally came from the Dutch windmills and the wooden shoes, or sabots, that could fall off and end up in the gears. So I thought, as industrialization became more widespread, who was more likely to drop a tool into the gears below than a "monkey" climbing around above said gears. If the commonly dropped tool that stopped the grist mill or factory gears was a hammer or pliers maybe we would have "monkey hammers" or "monkey pliers", but NO, we have "monkey WRENCHES". If someone can verify that those people sent into the overhead works were indeed called "Monkeys" I think it makes a good case for the wrench being named after those who preferred it, possibly over any other tool, for the job. Many tools are named after those who find the design best suited for the job, like a "cobblers hammer" or "tinners hammer". If "Monkeys" exclusively preferred a certain style of combination wrench / hammer then might the tool not become known as a "monkey wrench"? I'd like to hear from anyone with thoughts on the idea.
John Dunn
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I don't remember if I was reading something, or possibly watching a documentary, about the lives of those working in early factories of the industrial revolution, especially children, and the jobs they had to do. Passing mention was made that some of the more agile boys were enlisted to climb into the overhead maze of line shafting, pulleys, and belts to do assorted lubrication and minor maintenance adjustments.and end up in the gears. <snip>
John Dunn
Checked monkey in the Oxford English Dictionary -- what a bunch of meanings! -- but finally found, "A term of playful contempt, especially for young people." The word is also associated with qualities like mimicking, gambolling about, and great activity. I know this kind of association, with children and constant motion in other cultures, too. Especially boys.
I have also heard the connection with children and the old line-shaft factories. What I heard was that the lads who had to climb up to grease the line- shaft were referred to as "grease monkeys." Maybe that is a source for "grease monkey" as a mechanic. And just maybe (WAG) it's the grease monkey who gave the screw wrench (1850s term in military manuals) the common name of monkey wrench.
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American Machinist, 1880 Mar,Vol3 Pg9 gives this somewhat diferent explanation: (slightly garbled OCR)
"Would yon be Bo kind as to give me the/lerivation of the term "monkey" as applied to a wrench?
A.—The term monkey was first applied to a weight used as a hammer, as in the pile-driver, and is known by that name at the present time. When the weight is used, as in a drop hammer, to form or indent metals, it is also known as a " monkey hammer." The term " monkey" is also applied to a pump, which is the sailor's name for the sucking straw introduced at a gimlet hole in a wine cask. It is as old as Xenophon, who describes this mode of pilfering from the wine jars of Armenia. This style qf pump will probably remain in use much longer without improvement. The term "monkey" as applied to a wrench signifies hammer, as a monkey wrench is part hammer and part wrench, forming a very useful combination. "
As is typical, no references are cited :(
At least it doesn't require mangling some poor fellows name ;P
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I have heard two stories
one is that when they were first made you had to twist the handle to open and close the jaw
thus twisting the monkeys tail to make him work
two a french inventor by the name of monqui first produce it
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My theory (based on the earliest I could find the term "monkey wrench" in print was late 1830's Britain) -- "monkey" as an adjective denoting small & agile was applied to all kinds of things in the early 19th Century. Powder monkeys were the boys who brought gunpowder up to the deck, etc. This was the time when Britain was expanding empire in those regions of the world where monkeys were endemic -- especially India.
That first "monkey wrench" I found in print was a 6-inch "twist handle to adjust the size" in a toolmaker's pattern book.
The true origin is lost in unrecorded oral history, nearly 200 years ago or more. Makes it fun to speculate.
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Makes it fun to speculate.
my guess is speculation is all we have.
have heard the term grease monkey for the people who lubricated factory jack shafts as well.
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Those old machine shops had a lot of jack shafts, with a lot of bearings that needed greasing. And just look at all those flat belts. Makes a guy wonder just how many one armed ex-grease monkeys there were walking around back then?
(http://www.smokstak.com/gallery/files/8/1/2/4/3-5-1020.jpg)
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That first "monkey wrench" I found in print was a 6-inch "twist handle to adjust the size" in a toolmaker's pattern book.
Stan what was the date on the pattern book? Of all the explanations on the origin of "monkey wrench" the monkey as a nickname for boys e.g. grease monkeys sounds the most plausible to me but like you said we will probably never know for certain.
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Of all the explanations on the origin of "monkey wrench" the monkey as a nickname for boys e.g. grease monkeys sounds the most plausible to me but like you said we will probably never know for certain.
Something I just thought of... It looks like the earliest uses of "monkey wrench" come from England. The technical name for these in the 1850s was "screw wrench" in the US. Was "monkey wrench" an imported name? If so, when did it arrive here? A 1908 American English dictionary does not include monkey wrench, but a 1922 American English dictionary does, and includes as an illustration a Coe's.
A consistent meaning of monkey is mischief, fooling around. Throwing a monkey wrench in the works started out in England as "a spanner in the works" (which some of us will remember in the title of John Lennon's "A Spaniard in the Works").
If enough linguists become interested in monkey wrenches, we might get answers, or at least be able to find the dates of the earlier appearances of monkey wrench in published sources.
It might be as simple as having a wrench that both turns nuts and bolts, and hammers. You can get in a good deal of mischief with a tool like this.
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I always wondered the same. The stories are all intresting, who really knows witch is correct.
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>but a 1922 American English dictionary does,
Appletons 1918 Spanish-English dictionary provides a translation, so by then at least , it was common enough in usage to be worth a translation....
(llave inglesa) Which seems to now translate back into adjustable wrench...
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(llave inglesa) Which seems to now translate back into adjustable wrench...
Scratching my head to figure out how llave inglesa (English key) translates to monkey wrench, though llave can mean a try square.