A Monkey Wrench Inventor Visits Versailles, Missouri, 1906

Thanksgiving week of 1906 brought three visitors to Versailles, Missouri. D. P. Kahle, E. C. Kahle and T. McWaters had come all the way from Oil City, Pennsylvania, “to look over our county,” the Morgan County Republican said. D. P. Kahle already owned “some Morgan county dirt near Barnett.” Dirt was the editor’s word for land, and Barnett was a little town in the same county.

But the paper was most excited about something else. Mr. Kahle, it said, “is the inventer of a new monkey wrench, which is automatic and instantaneous in its operation, and a wonderful improvement over the old style wrench.” That’s the paper’s own spelling of inventor. And it printed the news before the United States Patent Office had even said yes.

1906 Morgan County Republican news item saying D. P. Kahle of Oil City, Pennsylvania, visited for Thanksgiving and is the inventor of a new monkey wrench

The trouble with the old wrench

A monkey wrench has two jaws. One is fixed at the top. The other one slides up and down, so the wrench can grab a big nut or a small one. On the old style, you moved that jaw by turning a little nut on the handle. Turn, turn, turn. If the jaw was wide open and the bolt was small, that took a while.

There was a second problem. A paper in Aberdeen, Washington, explained it in 1905: “In the ordinary monkey-wrench the movable jaw has a tendency to slip out of the position in which it is adjusted.” That meant you had to set it all over again, almost every time you used it.

1905 newspaper item Improvement in Monkey-Wrenches, with a drawing of a hand setting the jaw of a wrench

The same paper said fixing an everyday tool was hard. “Inventors, as a rule, have been unable to improve ordinary tools, such as the monkey-wrench, saw or hammer,” it wrote. People kept trying anyway. That story was about Edward A. Renouf of Wellsville, Ohio, who had patented his own idea with a toothed lever.

1905 newspaper paragraph saying the movable jaw of an ordinary monkey wrench tends to slip out of place

How Kahle’s wrench worked

Kahle’s plan is written down in his patent. His full name was Dorsey P. Kahle, and he lived in Venus, Pennsylvania, in Venango County, the same county as Oil City. He filed for his patent on November 17, 1906. That was just 12 days before Thanksgiving, so his patent papers were brand new when he got to Missouri.

He said the wrench was “commonly styled a ‘monkey’ wrench,” and he wanted “a quick acting wrench.” Here is the trick. Inside a collar on the handle sat two small washers, like flat metal rings. Each one had threads on just one side, and a tiny spring pushed those threads tight against the threaded handle. That held the jaw in place, so it couldn’t slip.

To move the jaw fast, you squeezed two little knobs on the washers that stuck out of the collar. The washers let go of the threads, and the jaw slid freely, up or down, right to the nut. You let go of the knobs, and the springs snapped the washers back onto the threads. Then you gave the collar a small turn for a snug fit, just “similar to the sleeve or nut of an ordinary wrench.” Kahle hoped it would be “a simple and inexpensive wrench that can be easily and quickly manipulated.”

1907 patent drawing of D. P. Kahle's wrench, showing the wrench from the side, cut in half, and its small parts, with his signature

What a wrench cost

A plain monkey wrench did not cost much. In February 1907, Smith’s 5-10-25c Store in Malvern, Arkansas, sold “8 in. Monkey Wrenches” for 25 cents. That was the same price as a rake or a roasting pan at the same store. A lamp chimney, the glass tube that sat on a kerosene lamp, was 5 cents.

1907 store ad from Malvern, Arkansas, listing 8-inch monkey wrenches for 25 cents among rakes, hoes and lamp chimneys

The same week in Versailles

The visitors picked a lively week. A new railroad, the Versailles & Sedalia Railway, was being built to haul coal, and it wasn’t going smoothly. The paper said the railroad’s engine “finally got here last Saturday, but badly out of repair.” A good wrench would have come in handy.

1906 news item saying the Versailles and Sedalia Railway engine finally arrived but badly out of repair

The town’s electric lights were acting up too. They had “been going out at odd times lately,” so people had the “extra trouble of hunting up and lighting lamps.” And nobody went hungry. At the K. of P. banquet (the Knights of Pythias, a men’s club), the guests had plenty of Thanksgiving turkey. “There was a ton or so left,” the paper said.

1906 news item saying a ton or so of Thanksgiving turkey was left after the K. of P. banquet

What happened next

The Patent Office said yes. On June 4, 1907, Kahle received Patent No. 855,891 for his wrench. He kept tinkering. In 1911 he got a second patent, No. 999,034, for a new version. It aimed “to simplify the construction of the wrench disclosed in my former patent,” and it could even grip a round pipe. The papers we found don’t say whether a hardware store ever sold one.

He kept coming back to Missouri, too. In October 1912 the Republican wrote that “Mr. Kahle, of Venus, Pa., who is interested in Morgan county lands,” had stopped off on his way home from Wyoming to look over his land. The editor added, “We acknowledge a pleasant visit.”

1912 news item saying Mr. Kahle of Venus, Pennsylvania, stopped in Versailles on his way back from Wyoming

The photo at the top of this story is a 1905 postcard of factories along the river in Oil City, the town the paper named as the visitors’ home. It’s a long way from there to Versailles. Still, back in 1906, before he left town, Kahle stopped at the newspaper office and renewed his paper all the way into 1908. He was “wishing to keep posted on Morgan county affairs.” An inventor with a new idea in his pocket and a patent on the way still wanted the news from a little Missouri town.