When Dad was adding to our house – the addition he put on, starting when I was five, roughly doubled the size of the house – the measuring choice for room-sized carpentry was pretty much between a small, short tape measure and a six foot zig zag rule. The modern tape measures large enough to choke an elephant were way far in the future.
I think Dad’s tape measure, and the hours I spent holding one end of it as he worked on the house, is most of why I got started picking up old tape measures at yard/estate sales. I don’t have many; at least, I don’t consider 17 very many. But they’re interesting things. Here’s my herd. I won’t talk about each one; just the highlights.
I’m starting, of course, with Dad’s tape measure, which I inherited when we broke up our parents’ house. It’s nothing fancy – a simple little push/pull six footer from Evans. That, and his no-name 30” wooden level, were his main layout tools, once the foundation and framing were in place (I suspect my grandfather, who helped with the foundation and framing, had larger carpentry layout tools; but I was five, and not paying close enough attention).
I’m showing my round and half-round tape measures next, because, as I understand it, the original portable steel tape measure was a loose springy measure that rolled up into a can resembling a chewing tobacco tin. These are kind of the next logical step, keeping the shape while adding a spring. The top tapes all have a plain steel finish on the tape itself that signals age (it took a while for manufacturers to realize that a painted finish was easier to read and more rust-resistant – or it may have taken a while for a sufficiently durable, flexible paint to come out of the paint labs). The top left “Little Pal” is just three feet long; top center is a promotional piece from the Northern California Hardware and Steel Company in San Francisco; and top right has a ratcheting lock, released by the center button, a great idea about which the manufacturer was rather modest, since there’s no maker’s name on it.
The bottom two tapes signal the beginning of the move toward blockier tape measures. Both of them have the familiar notation on the bottom indicating how much distance to add for the case when making inside measurements.
The third picture has some locking tapes. This was a pretty important advance for people working alone – appreciated by anyone who’s tried to catch an edge with the tape from a distance, or had a non-locking tape suddenly roll up because an errant breeze knocked the hook loose. The top left (now nameless, although I think there was originally a “badge” on the other side of the tape) has a slide activated by the red button and released by another button on the other side; the design is superior to Stanley’s Leverlock design, now an industry standard, because the tape has no tendency to slip when being locked. The other three automatically lock when extended, rolling back when the center button is pushed (much like many vacuum cleaners retract their cords); the Lufkin has the added feature of a locking lever.
Picture four shows some tapes made by H K Porter, a conglomerate that gobbled up all kinds of companies in the 50s. Three of the four – the top two “Chiefs” from Carlson & Sullivan (established in the early 50s to make tape measures, bought by Porter in 1955 and later folded into Disston) and the Disston bottom left – represent product names owned by Porter. The bottom right tape is one of my favorite ever “gimme” promotional items. I’m not sure why the Zoom cereal people (still in production, now part of Krusteaz/Continental Mills) thought a tape measure would increase the consumption of their cereal, but they did, and turned to H K Porter for help.
Finally, every organizational scheme needs room for “miscellaneous,” and that’s what we’ve got here. I don’t know who made the top left tape, but I do know I like the Art Deco styling. I couldn’t resist the top center tape when I found it at a yard sale, because the shape is such a nice pun on the advertising slogan. The tape autolocks as it’s pulled out; the black button on the chimney (from which the tape issues) retracts it. This is my only fractional/metric tape. The top right tape is another promotional piece, this one from CT Engineering Corporation, which apparently provided contract personnel (temps, in other words) in Houston and southern California; the firm appears still to be in service, with a different focus. I couldn’t do an essay on tapes without the ubiquitous Stanley Leverlock/Powerlock, so here’s one in the bottom left. Finally, we have two little Lufkins from different eras, designed to drop in your pocket. The red plastic one, bottom right, came as a freebie with the 25-foot Lufkin that lives in my toolbelt. Lufkin’s slide lock is better than Stanley’s; like the button lock described up above, it doesn’t move the tape when activated.
These aren’t all my tape measures. I realized after taking the photos for this post that I’d forgotten the tape in my car’s glovebox (there for yard sales, in case I have to measure something), and I didn’t bother to show the 25 foot tapes that we’re all familiar with. I also have a couple of long tapes, a nice old leather-covered 50 footer from my uncle and the plastic-bodied Stanley 100-footer that I actually use on the job because I don’t care as much about getting it dirty. And I have three folding (zig-zag) rules with slide extensions on one end, way better than tapes for inside measures; and a fourth all-metal zig-zag that unfolds to six feet, handy when I need a little more precision than the tapes offer.
