Craftsman’s quick-release wrench cost Sears $10,000 and made it $44 million.
Peter Roberts was 18 and a clerk at Sears in Gardner, Massachusetts, when he invented a socket wrench whose button let one hand change the socket. Sears paid him $10,000 for the patent in 1965 and led him to believe it would hardly sell. In ten years Sears sold 19 million wrenches, for a net profit of more than $44 million.
Craftsman on Brandseum