Louisville Electric Manufacturing Co Drill

[swervncarz]

Anyone have any info on the Louisville Electric Manufacturing Co? I picked up this beast of a drill today but can't find any info on the manufacturer. This thing is BIG .....weighs close to 24 lbs

[ron darner]

About all I have on Louisville drills is an ad from the August, 1922, issue of Machinery magazine.  I think you'll find it interesting, though.  I can't see a trigger switch in the ad, but yours has one.  Black & Decker patented that feature around 1917, IIRC; Louisville must have been paying a royalty or been otherwise connected with B&D.  Yours must be later than 1922, because it has what I see as an improved lower handle, with that switch.

[swervncarz]

Thanks for the info.... Pretty neat ad..... This thing still runs btw.... I'd like to find out how old it is!

[swervncarz]

Model number is 31074

[Lostmind]

The ad says " light weight" . Wouldn't they be surprised at todays plastic drill motors.

[Plyerman]

The ad says " light weight" . Wouldn't the be surprised at todays plastic drill motors.

Makes you wonder what they considered to be a "heavy weight"!

[rusty]

They made bench grinders, buffers, electric hacksaws etc.

But perhaps most interesting, they made one of the first, if not the first...electric lawnmowers...

https://www.google.com/patents/US1831681?dq=1,831,681&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZqocU9LRKoerkQfw14HACg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA

Branded, appropriately as 'pioneer'

[ron darner]

"The ad says ' light weight '. Wouldn't they be surprised at today's plastic drill motors."
Back in the nineteen-teens and -twenties, there were "portable" drills intended for making holes in the web of railroad rails, for installing the fish plates to join them; those often took two men to move into position on site.  But, they were a huge improvement over the man-powered drills that they replaced for that work!  Here's one where the holes were just for attaching electrical bonds between rails (and the rails might have been considerably smaller than what freight trains required): http://www.google.com/patents/US464673.  Here is one that might have been a heavyweight (they called it "powerful in proportion to its weight"): http://www.google.com/patents/US993352.  The inventor referred to it as "preferably portable" (3rd paragraph of text).  Yeah: only preferably portable.  Here's one TITLED "Portable Drill": http://www.google.com/patents/US1333743.  But my favorite is in the description of a 1,000 pound railroad rail inspection machine (U.S. Patent 2622131), where they tell what moves it along (at up to 18 mph on the level):