Black & Decker

Black and Decker. . , Looking east along Joppa Road, about one-quarter mile from this spot, is the location of Stanley Black and Decker, Inc. Samuel Duncan Black and Alonzo Galloway Decker of Baltimore originally established the company in 1909 as the Black and Decker Manufacturing Company., By 1916, with the development of small but powerful electric motors, they were working on designing a handheld electric drill. In 1917 patents were granted to the two men for drill gearing and for the first trigger switch for a pistol-style handheld drill. These innovations were some of the most important in creating the modern handheld drill, and the tools rapidly became very popular., Black and Decker opened its first factory in east Towson in 1917. During the 1920s, B and D acquired several smaller manufacturing companies, including Marschke Manufacturing Company of Indianapolis (makers of grinding machinery, especially bench grinders) and Domestic Electric Company of Cleveland (makers of fractional-horsepower electric motors), moving those operations to Towson factory. It became a publicly-traded company on the NY Stock Exchange in 1936., The company continued to expand through the 20th and into the 21st centuries, acquiring other companies over the years, including brand names such as DeWalt (1960) and Craftsman (from Sears, 2014). In 2010, it merged with The Stanley Works to become Stanley Black and Decker, the world's largest tool company.