The Rawlplug Group is a company involved in the production of fixings, fasteners, and other tools.

History

Rawlings Brothers, a small plumbing and electrical engineering company, was founded in 1887 in London. In 1910, the company was awarded a contract by the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, which required them to unobtrusively fix electrical fittings to the museum walls. The contract led to the invention and patenting of the world's first

wall plug A wall plug (UK English) also known as an anchor (US) or " Rawlplug" (UK), is a fibre or plastic (originally wood) insert used to enable the attachment of a screw in a material that is porous or brittle, or that would otherwise not support the ...

, which became a standard solution for attaching things to walls.

John Joseph Rawlings John Joseph Rawlings (1 June 1860 – 4 August 1942) was a British mechanical engineer and inventor of the wall plug, also known from his name as the rawlplug. He was the founder of the Rawlplug manufacturing company. Biography Rawlings was bo ...

, who is credited with the invention of the wall plug, named his product Rawlplug, using the first syllable of his last name, and renamed his business Rawlplug in 1919.

Products

During the inter-war period, the Rawlplug company patented some new fixing methods and tools. After the war, it invented the first metal drywall anchor in 1947.

ETA registration

The company continued to sell its products worldwide and in 1998 became the first British producer to attain

ETA Eta ( ; uppercase , lowercase ; ''ē̂ta'' or ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel, . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative, , in most dialects of Ancient Greek, it ...

certification. Since the death of John Joseph Rawlings, the business changed hands a few times until in 2005 it was bought by Koelner Group, a

Wrocław Wrocław is a city in southwestern Poland, and the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It is the largest city and historical capital of the region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the Oder River in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Eu ...

-based manufacturer.

References

External links

* {{Use dmy dates, date=September 2017 Manufacturing companies established in 1887 Engineering companies of the United Kingdom Wall anchors 1887 establishments in England 2005 mergers and acquisitions