Hexagon Nuts & Bolts--XINXING Bolts
Ancient Screws
Hex-head nuts and bolts are part of a fastening system that uses screw threads. Screw threads date back to Assyrian King Sennacherib in the seventh century BCE. Sennacherib used screws as part of the pumps that fed the water systems for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Greek mathematician, Archytas of Tarentum, described wooden screw threads in the third century BCE, and by the first century BCE wooden screws were widely used in oil and wind presses. These were usually attached to some sort of permanent handle as a turning device.
Metal Screws
Metal screws and bolts first appeared in Europe in the 1400s, but did not become a common fastener until the 18th century, when machine tools were developed that could manufacture them. Between 1770 and 1798, British instrument maker Jesse Ramsden, British engineer Henry Maudslay and U.S. inventor David Wilkins all patented screw-cutting lathes for making threaded rods. Early screws tended to be custom made with square bolt heads. Replacement bolts were all custom made and therefore not available in large enough quantities to become widely used.
Standardization
Square-head bolts were common in early applications because they were easier to make with the tools, metals and techniques of the time. Square heads require less accurate tolerances, so that a wrench that might not be the exact size of a bolt but be near enough to turn a hand-machined square bolt head. Square heads, however are large and require more room to turn. By 1841, British toolmaker Joseph Whitworth and his American counterpart, William Sellers of the Franklin Institute had proposed creating a system of standardized screw threads. Standardized bolts and nuts soon followed as toolmakers developed new techniques for making them in quantity.
Bessemer
Between 1856 and 1876, British Metallurgist Sir Henry Bessemer developed the Be