Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered" channel.

  1. I don't know about the rest of the US, but the Robertson is alive and well on the US West Coast, usually known as the Square Drive. Most deck, drywall, and construction screws designed to be installed with impact drivers or screw guns are now either Square or Torx headed. And Torx is more expensive, so I think the square is more common. And in the US electrical industry, screws in electrical boxes, and terminal screws, are often combo Philips and square drive, and a lot of electricians mainly use the square drive. You are right that they were mainly used in Canada, but that's old information, because with the explosion of cordless impact drivers, there was a need for something that worked better than Philips or flat, because when you are driving a 4" long aggressive deck screw into dense wood with an impact driver, you really have to lean into it to keep a Philips from stripping out. With the square, you just have to keep it kinda straight, and it just works. #2 Square is small, so fits well in small head screws, where Torx is harder to fit. Then when you get into construction lags and some of the newer "Engineered Fasteners" you start needing Torx just to handle the torque of running a 10 inch long lag into knots lol But the head will be larger, so the Torx works perfectly. But the square drive Robertson certainly has become ubiquitous and heavily used in construction these days thanks to impact drivers.
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