| Proto | |
| Type: | Subsidiary |
| Industry: | Manufacturing |
| Foundation: | Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Location City: | New Britain, Connecticut |
| Location Country: | United States |
| Products: | Industrial tools |
| Parent: | Stanley Black & Decker |
| Homepage: | protoindustrial.com |
Proto Tools (formally Stanley Proto) is an American industrial hand tool company. Founded as Plomb, it is presently a division of Stanley Black & Decker. The company is credited with creating the first combination wrench in 1933.
Proto was founded in 1907 by Alphonse Plomb, Jacob Weninger, and Charles Williams as the Plomb Tool Company, a small blacksmith shop making chisels in Los Angeles. In 1933, Plomb released what is commonly credited as the first combination wrench.[1]
Plomb acquired a number of companies during the 1940s, including Cragin Tool of Chicago, Illinois in 1940, P&C Tool of Oregon in 1941, Penens Tool of Cleveland, Ohio in 1942, and J.P. Danielson of Jamestown, New York in 1947.[2] Penens Tool would produce tools under the Fleet and Challenger brand names after its acquisition.[3]
In 1946, Plomb was sued by another tool manufacturer—Fayette R. Plumb, Inc., now a brand of Apex Tool Group[4] —for trademark infringement.[5] The company began manufacturing its tools with the Proto name, a portmanteau of "professional" and "tools," in 1948. In 1957, the company began operating as Pendleton Tool Industries.[6]
In 1964, Proto was acquired by Ingersoll-Rand, and in 1984, it was acquired by Stanley and became Stanley Proto Industrial Tools.[7]