Americana: Wrenching Sears

During his free time as an 18-year-old clerk in a Sears, Roebuck store in Gardner, Mass., Peter Roberts invented a quick-release ratchet wrench that enabled a mechanic to change sockets with one hand. At his boss’s suggestion, Roberts offered his invention to Sears. Executives told him that his wrench probably would not sell well and that patents were pending for similar tools. But Sears eventually bought the rights to Roberts’ wrench for $10,000.

A year later, Roberts discovered his invention prominently displayed in a Sears catalog. As it turned out, while trying to discourage him about the value of the tool, the company had test-marketed it and converted about 75% of its wrenches to his design. Sears went on to sell 26 million of the wrenches for a profit of about $44 million. Roberts sued. In December 1976 a federal jury decided that Sears had obtained Roberts’ patent fraudulently. The jury awarded him $1 million. Last week, after Sears had fought the decision all the way to the Supreme Court and lost, Roberts, now a 33-year-old grocer in Red Bank, Tenn., collected his money. What will he do with it? “I’ll do some more tinkering,” he says. “I think I have some more good ideas.”