Johan Petter Johansson (December 12, 1853 – August 25, 1943), sometimes known as JP, was a Swedish

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and

industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

. He invented a modern

adjustable spanner An adjustable spanner (UK and most other Anglophone countries), also called a shifting spanner (Australia and New Zealand) or adjustable wrench (US and Canada), is any of various styles of wrench, spanner (wrench) with a movable jaw, allowing it ...

(patents in 1891 and 11 May 1892). He obtained over 100 patents in total. He was born in

Vårgårda Vårgårda is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Vårgårda Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden with 5,825 inhabitants in 2020. Gallery Marknadsplatsen i Vårgårda, den 16 juni 2006, bild 3.JPG, Fåglum brothers in V� ...

in western Sweden, the oldest of six children in a

crofter A croft is a traditional Scottish term for a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable, and usually, but not always, with a crofter's dwelling thereon. A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a ten ...

's family. His first employment was as an assistant operator of a

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs Work (physics), mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a Cylinder (locomotive), cyl ...

at a local

peat Peat is an accumulation of partially Decomposition, decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, Moorland, moors, or muskegs. ''Sphagnum'' moss, also called peat moss, is one of the most ...

factory. He left Vårgårda at age 19, in 1873, for

Motala Motala () is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Motala Municipality, Östergötland County, Sweden with a municipal population of 43,717 inhabitants in 2024. It is the third largest city of Östergötland, following Linköping and N ...

to work as a

navvy Navvy, a Clipping (morphology), clipping of navigator (United Kingdom, UK) or navigational engineer (United States, US), is particularly applied to describe the manual Laborer, labourers working on major civil engineering projects and occasional ...

. Following

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

service in 1874, he moved to

Eskilstuna Eskilstuna () is a Urban areas in Sweden, city and the seat of Eskilstuna Municipality, Södermanland County, Sweden. The city of Eskilstuna had 69,948 inhabitants in 2020, with a total population of 107,806 inhabitants in Eskilstuna municipality ...

where he worked for the Bolinder-Munktell factory, and in 1878 he moved to

Västerås Västerås () is a city in central Sweden on the shore of Mälaren, Lake Mälaren in the province of Västmanland, west of Stockholm. The city had a population of 127,799 at the end of 2019, out of the municipal total of 158,653, over 100,000 mo ...

where he found employment at a mechanical

workshop Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the only ...

. Following that, he worked as a

blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from #Other metals, other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such ...

at a nearby farm. At this time, he had made a decision to leave Sweden for the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. This never happened; he was instead offered a more esteemed job by his former employer Munktells, and the offer changed his mind. In 1886 he decided to start his own business and relocated to

Enköping Enköping is a locality and the seat of Enköping Municipality, Uppsala County, Sweden with 30,000 inhabitants in 2018. Geography Enköping is situated near Lake Mälaren, about 78 km west of Stockholm. A comparably large number of S ...

where he started ''Enköpings Mekaniska Verkstad'' (the Mechanical Workshop of Enköping), which quickly became a successful venture. It was during the years in his workshop that he invented the

and the

plumber wrench A plumber wrench (or plumber's wrench, pipe wrench, Swedish wrench or Swedish pattern wrench) is a form of plier described as a pipe wrench that uses compound leverage to grip and rotate plumbing pipes. Similar to the action of a locking plier ...

. In 1890, B.A. Hjorth & Company agreed to distribute his tools worldwide under the " Bahco" trademark. The Bahco tools are still in production, having over 100 million wrenches manufactured to date. Johansson transferred the then-large enterprise to his son, Hannes Brynge, and the B.A. Hjorth & Company in 1916. He started experimenting with

Armature (electrical) In electrical engineering, the armature is the winding (or set of windings) of an electric machine which carries alternating current. The armature windings conduct AC even on DC machines, due to the commutator action (which periodically re ...

and in 1919 opened a new factory, Triplex, which manufactured electrical

pendulum A pendulum is a device made of a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate i ...

s and various devices. He died at the age of 89 after having been productive for most of his life.

References

External links

The J.P. Johansson Museum
* Skiftnyckelns Vänner. '. (Retrieved February 25, 2005.) *

Nationalencyklopedin (; "The National Encyclopedia" in English), abbreviated NE, is a comprehensive contemporary Swedish-language encyclopedia with several hundred thousand articles. It is available both online and via a printed version. History The project was ...

. ''Johan Petter Johansson''.
Official Bahco website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johansson, Johan Petter 1853 births 1943 deaths 19th-century Swedish businesspeople 19th-century Swedish inventors Swedish blacksmiths 20th-century Swedish businesspeople People from Vårgårda Municipality