An adjustable spanner, called a shifting spanner or shifter in Australia and New Zealand and an adjustable wrench in the United States and Canada, is any of several styles of spanner built with a movable jaw, so that a single tool can be used on many different sizes of nut or bolt head rather than fitting only one fastener size the way a conventional fixed spanner does.
Facts
Introduced When (Circa)1892 (Bahco or Crescent-type patent, Johan Petter Johansson); earlier screw-adjusted forms date to the early 1800s 1 OriginEnglish engineers Richard Clyburn and Edwin Beard Budding published influential screw-adjusted spanner designs in 1842 and 1843; Clyburn's thumbwheel worm-on-rack form was the direct ancestor of the later Bahco or Crescent type. 1 Introduced era (class) In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Adjustable Spanner (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationForms and names section, Bahco and Johansson paragraph
The Swedish company Bahco attributes its invention to Johan Petter Johansson, who in 1892 received a Swedish patent for it.
Forms and names section, Geesin 2015 paragraph
Geesin and others document that English engineers Richard Clyburn and Edwin Beard Budding presented some influential new designs in 1842 and 1843.
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